A range of instruments to create a platform for collaboration and cooperation with external institutions
Session at AAAS Annual Meeting (scheduled February 17th- 21th, 2011 in Washington DC)
The session offered a global view of the co-evolutive approach and innovative design thinking to address social challenges.
RISTEX organized three-hour session on February 20th, 2011 at AAAS Annual Meeting (Feb 17-Feb21) under the title of 窶魯esign Thinking to Mobilize Science, Technology and Innovation for Social Challenges窶 We nominated seven speakers from Belgium, Germany, Japan, UK and USA. The aim of this symposium was to highlight the innovative approaches towards address social challenges, offered a global view of the co-evolutive approach and innovative design thinking to address social challenges covering the issue from different aspects.
Although the innovation process is now much more open and receptive to social influences, progress on social innovation will call for the greater involvement of stakeholders who can mobilize science, technology and innovation for this aim.
As a consequence, we reaffirmed the significance of the from holistic and multidisciplinary mind approach with participants and making continued efforts towards 窶魯esigning tomorrow窶 has been advocated for the further step.
International workshop held at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
In 2009, RISTEX jointly hosted with the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) two international workshops, which took place in May and November, on the theme of innovation to address social challenges.
The first workshop was entitled 窶廡ostering Innovation to Address Social Challenges窶 and the second 窶弋ransforming Innovation to Address Social Challenges.窶 Around 100 participants from OECD member nations and related organizations attended, and were both the scene of much lively debate.
The results of these two workshops has been reflected in the Innovation Strategy to announce at the OECD summit in May 2010.
The overall chair is Yuko HARAYAMA, Professor at Tohoku University Graduate School
The group photo at the end of the second workshop
Support for World Wide Views in Japan, a citizens窶 conference on global warming
The World Wide Views on Global Warming citizens窶 conference was planned in an effort to make sure that the voices of citizens, rather than experts, would be heard in the run-up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP15) meeting held in Copenhagen in December 2009. On September 26 2009, around 4000 citizens from the 38 participant countries and regions used the same methods, materials and questions to mold their own position into a recommendation, while discussing some of the points of issue at COP15. In Japan, the event was held in Kyoto under the title of 窶抔orld Wide Views in Japan,窶 and 100 citizens from across the country gathered to spend eight hours debating global warming.
Since RISTEX covers many R&D projects pursuing the keywords such as a participatory technology assesement(pTA), and a policy-forming dialog through discussion with citizens , which on global warming, mainly conducted within R&D Science Technology and Humanity Focus Area, we supported World Wide Views in Japan not as an event but as an implementation of action research of those projects.
In March this year a symposium was held in Tokyo, which reported on the World Wide Views on Global Warming experiment and its results achieved in Japan. Discussions unfolded about the significance of and issues in the experiment to give the rarely heard voices of citizens a place in a policymaking p
rocess.
Photo: Tetsu KUBOTA
