Ultimate Goals and Purposes of Research and Innovation
Given the role of a research and innovation system to create, collect, structure and distribute new knowledge, and its tradition in exploring less-known paths and discovering new horizons, co-RRI frames scientists and other experts of research and innovation communities as appropriate partners to initiate and sustain the search for answers to the global challenges we are currently facing.
They are well placed to organise and actively contribute to actions pushing long-term transformative change, such as raising awareness, creating niches to experiment and collaborate, broadening and connecting networks of frontrunners, and creating tools to deal with the uncertainty surrounding policy and management actions for transformative change.
Moreover, co-RRI stands for an approach in which a lack of complete scientific understanding never justifies a lack of action. In line with the co-RRI concept, researchers and other knowledge actors should therefore be pro-active and try to tackle local manifestations of the grand societal challenges (glocal challenges). As each locality is characterised by its own specific combination of cultural, social, infrastructural, geographical, economic and environmental elements, the actual problems, as well as the answers, are contextualised and unique.
As a result, co-RRI stresses the importance for scientists and other people involved in research and innovation to take local needs, values and opportunities as a starting point to consider which knowledge, technologies and skills are appropriate to effectively respond to the glocal problems under investigation.