ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a brief sketch of the pre-history of responsible research and innovation (RRI), showing how deeply it is embedded in earlier efforts to better integrate science and society. When the notion of RRI gradually arose in the arenas of European and national-level policy around 2010, it had not emerged ex nihilo. More generally, understanding RRI in terms of a process means looking at articulations between the individual and the institutional in research. Ethical, legal and social aspects research would initially also focus on the field of life sciences and biotechnologies, with research steered through more or less substantive funding possibilities. Anticipation refers to systematic thinking of the many different potential outcomes of innovation while concurrently admitting our limited foresight capacities. RRI comes at a time when innovation is seen as the key driving force of societal developments and neoliberal framings of innovation could potentially endanger the very idea of opening up toward society.
