Robert Gianni The discourse of responsibility 1 The discourse of responsibility A social perspective Robert Gianni Introduction The notion of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), recently launched by several national funding agencies and adopted by the European Commission (EC) in 2011, has become increasingly important for the development of publicly funded research (Pearson Ch. 5). The EC is the major financier for research in Europe, and its guidelines play a crucial role with regard to the objectives and methodology that different stakeholders involved in research practices should and will pursue. However, the understanding of how a single general framework can and should work in different domains still represents one of the main challenges for scientists and policy-makers. The necessary level of abstraction of a regulatory policy must come to terms with its application and the specific measures that it requires. It is not an easy task to disentangle the complexity of RRI because of the different perspectives it needs to embrace and the necessary flexibility it requires in order to be adapted to different contexts. Furthermore, such flexibility can undergo attempts at instrumentalization, generating an ambiguous and counterproductive scenario. However, a flexible pattern does not imply that RRI-related words are unconstrained or totally arbitrary. The meaning of the acronym RRI can and should be decided according to a political vision put in place through dedicated actions (van Oudheusden 2014; Gianni 2016). At first sight, innovation, research and responsibility can be seen as belonging to at least two clashing conceptual paradigms. On the one hand, the dimension of research and innovation tends, although with clear differences, towards the construction of a more technological future according to strategic and technical rules (Schumpeter 1934; Bessant 2013). 1 On the other hand, the dimension of responsibility is strongly anchored to a normative ground, defining duties and barriers for actions (Vincent et al. 2011). This presumed heterogeneity then raises some doubts about the possible convergence of two paradigms following divergent methodologies. How can we facilitate the integration of these two methodologies without losing their aims and spirit? How can research and innovation be boosted if we burden them with too many rules and other normative features? At the same time, what kind of Research & Innovation (R&I) are we going to promote if projects are constructed while ignoring what society stands for and considers valuable? The discrepancies in the interpretations of RRI and the difficulty in reaching a shared perspective (Owen et al. 2013) are the fruits of the ambiguity and cross-disciplinary nature of