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Conclusion

How can technological development, economic development, and the claims of society be reconciled? How should responsible innovation be promoted? Many approaches have been proposed in response to these questions. The RSU procedure has been developed with the perspective that technological and economic development should be promoted by taking responsible social uses into account. According to this approach, promoting responsible uses is one way to better adapt marketed products and services to the setting that will receive them. For this reason, the procedure is based on knowledge not just of the product’s impacts but of the impacts of the uses and practices the product will give rise to in society. The procedure allows for changes to a device once the development process has begun, in view of incorporating into the device functionalities that better address those social concerns deemed important to take into consideration.

But the RSU procedure is not centered solely on the product: it also aims to promote a process of collective learning on the part of the players involved in technological development and marketing. In that sense, it can be said the RSU procedure requires the players involved to make cognitive shift. For example, if the players’ implicit frame of reference is that of “science-driven techno-push”, a great gulf will emerge between their frame of reference and that deployed by the RSU procedure. This gap will be matter for discussion and debate. The various meetings that punctuate the procedure, from the interview about narratives to the presentation of scenarios, make possible this reflexivity about frames of reference and encourage participants to revisit them in order to guide the development of their product.

Incorporating an ethical dimension into the process of responsible technological development also raises questions about the place of ethics in modern societies. The various implications of ethics—professional ethics, organizational ethics and business ethics—gave rise to the concept of corporate social responsibility. The RSU procedure serves as a way of broaching the question of companies’ social responsibility by reconciling the development and marketing of technological innovations through the taking into account of social issues.