Responsible Innovation in Facebook/Meta

Responsible Innovation in Facebook/Meta Responsible Innovation in Facebook/Meta This project will help establish a research-based and externally credible framework for responsible innovation targeted at the particular realities facing technology companies like Meta. The objectives of the project include: 1. Define what RI means generally, and might mean in the tech industry, with a particular focus on its meaning for companies such as Meta; 2. Create a small set of case studies from publicly available materials on RI in government and the private sector that illustrate real-world attempts to grapple with and implement RI; 3. Provide preliminary perspectives on how firms might move from addressing RI at a tactical level for individual products or projects to a more strategic level, integrating concerns across relevant parts of the firm; and 4. Begin to understand and illustrate how companies can create benchmarks for RI performance and track progress toward them. The core of the research will be a literature review with an increasingly refined focus: First, a global, comprehensive focus, as the RI literature is not all that large but is concentrated around a small number of journals and leading authors/projects; second, a private sector focus, which within the RI literature is almost exclusively about high tech and emerging tech; and third, ICT and social media, where much of the literature may not be about RI specifically but may be about already identified values such as privacy, biased algorithms, etc., that may be crucial for Metas own framework. A small team under the direction of Professor Guston will perform the literature review, looking to identify candidate approaches or frameworks for deeper examination. These approaches will be refined into 3-5 case studies, drawn from experiences in any sector but focusing on actionability and applicability to the private sector. The literature review and case studies will be supplemented by a small number of interviews of relevant experts, e.g., executives both current and former with tech companies involved in responsible and/or ethical approaches to innovation, and researchers who have already studied some approaches to RI in the private sector or who have created frameworks in other sectors. The literature review and cases incorporated into a white paper (approx. 8-10,000 words) for anticipated publication in a journal such as the Journal of Responsible Innovation and stand-alone, unpublished case studies will form the core of the deliverables. The whitepaper will provide detailed coverage of the core objectives outlined above. The white paper and case studies will be reduced to a PPT deck for use by the project team as well as within Meta. The project will also organize a roundtable with interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral representation to discuss the case studies and emerging frameworks. The roundtable will serve as a bit of peer review and provide the opportunity for any mid-course corrections for this phase of what might be a multi-phase project. Such a team is also necessary to help with the challenges of translating concepts across sectoral boundaries and into actionable frameworks. In addition to seeking to publish a version of the white paper, the project will also seek to present its findings at professional meetings, for example, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or Society for Social Studies of Science, or the EuroScience Open Forum for a more international audience.