Responsible Innovation Futures

Overview

This unit aims to explore the relationship between innovation, culture and sustainability, and the longer-term impact – both positive and negative – of innovation on future generations. Emphasising equity, diversity, and both individual and collective empowerment, it integrates a futures-focus to support more sustainable and responsible innovation. The unit introduces futures literacy and systems thinking, providing students with knowledge of contemporary concepts, tools and methods for envisioning alternative future scenarios. The unit includes both the theoretical and practical aspects of futures-focused innovation, and identifies how systems thinking and futures literacy are fundamental to sustainable innovation.

Unit learning outcomes

Students who successfully complete this unit will be able to:

1. Articulate interrelationships between innovation and environmental, social, technological and economic factors
2. Experiment with prospective methods and tools for alternative futures and scenario thinking
3. Critically reflect on the environmental and social impacts of innovation
4. Investigate opportunities for responsible innovation in complex, volatile and ambiguous contexts
5. Use futures literacy to reflect on real world artefacts and practices
6. Interrogate the long-term consequences of contemporary innovation practice

Teaching methods

Hawthorn

Assessment

Content

This unit may include:

• Tools and methods for sustainable innovation practice including Transition Design, carbon literacy, circular economy and Doughnut Economics
• Systems thinking
• Policies, legislation and protocols regarding risk and sustainability 
• United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and respect for diversity of values and views as part of sustainability discourse 
• Strategic foresight methods and tools including Futures Triangle, Futures Cone, STEEPLE, Harman Fan and The Thing From The Future