The Development and Testing of an Early, Rapid Sustainability Assessment Tool for Responsible Innovation in Engineering Biology

The fast pace of emerging technologies Research and Innovation, and the multi-faceted character of sustainability, requires tools to deliberatively assess and manage projects from inception to commercialisation. Established assessment approaches often have a limited focus, require significant data and resources, and are typically targeted at intermediate to late project stages. Actors in the field could benefit from cost- and time-effective mechanisms to anticipate sustainability impacts to manage their projects accordingly. There is an opportunity for a method to fill this gap, targeting earlier, upstream phases of projects. In this paper, we present a novel early-stage anticipatory sustainability assessment tool that enables rapid, low-cost (in time and resources) assessment of projects and considers environmental, societal, and economic factors. The tool operationalises Responsible Research and Innovation concepts using the Anticipate, Inclusion, Reflexivity, and Responsiveness framework. The tool was piloted during participatory engagements with Engineering Biology researchers at three leading institutes and two SMEs in the UK. Results from these engagements indicate that the tool can be a valuable contribution to the set of available sustainability assessment practices because it integrates interdisciplinary knowledge from natural and social scientists to promote sustainable research pathways. Applying the tool highlights insights on sustainability strengths, weaknesses, and issues for further attention in a clear and user-friendly manner (radar diagrams). This early-stage assessment tool can act as a primer for subsequent more detailed analyses and can be used to inform decision-making processes to improve a project’s potential to address sustainability challenges.