Essay: Toward Responsible Innovation, by ESSEC Prof. Xavier Pavie

For fifty years, innovations have taken on a new dimension: the Internet, DNA sequencing, genomic manipulations, advances in transhumanism, nanotechnologies ... and much more. 

These recent innovations are not without addressing new issues whose consequences are as important as irreversible. The innovator, of whom Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are emblematic contemporary figures, appears as a personality as brilliant as he is destructive, who aspires to change the world regardless of the violence that may ensue. 

With this then, emerges the need to establish responsible innovation, in which the innovator should be accountable for his actions and review his position as a hero. To establish this new ethic, philosophy is a necessary recourse, since it questions, among other things, the self-control of the Stoics, the prudence of Aristotle, respect of Kant, the will power of Nietzsche and the power of Foucault.

Toward Responsible Innovation: Responsibility and Philosophy for a Humanely Sustainable Future
Xavier Pavie, Professor at ESSEC
World Scientific Publishing
252 pages
£60

By the same author (in French) : Imaginer son futur, Imaginer le monde de demain, Philosophie critique de l’innovation et de l’innovateur, L’innovation à l’épreuve de la philosophie, Le goût d’imaginer sa vie, Exercices spirituels : leçons de la philosophie contemporaine, L'influence du dialogue sur les relations et l'expérience client, L'innovation, élan du XXIème siècle : innover dans l'économie de la connaissance et des services, Le choix d’exister, Le Design Thinking au service de l’innovation responsable 

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