Paper long abstract:

Foresight in the form of priority-setting is used as a governance instrument to steer research and innovation towards societal challenges. The new concept and debate around Responsible Research and Innovation creates a potential new way to understand and analyse such priority-setting exercises. In this article I will examine a Danish priority-setting process (RESEARCH2015). My paper analyses the effects of the priority-setting process on the interaction between stakeholders, ideas, and viewpoints and the potential of foresight exercises to have impacts that go beyond the immediate process. The empirical work includes detailed process documents as well as interviews with experts, facilitators and participants. The study finds that the foresight exercise has succeeded in creating a space for constructive interaction among very different actors discussing societal challenges, but also that not all actors feel included or wish to accept the implicit selection criteria arising during the process. A difference in understanding can be detected between emphasising innovation and specialist expertise as a means for creating competiveness and focusing on the longer term benefits of research for social cohesion. While clear political impact of the process is visible, I argue that this should be seen as much as a successful adaptation of the process to political goals as a political transformation through the lessons of the process. For foresight to contribute effectively to the goals of responsible research and innovation, the implicit exclusion of actors with different ideas of how to set research priorities presents an important challenge to be dealt with.