Introduction

When discussing an RRI approach, stakeholder engagement is one of the essential practices. See module 0 and the roadmap. We will also elucidate this in more detail in section 3.2.

In section 3.3, we we will first look at the regular four-step approach for stakeholder analysis.

After that, we will focus on the RRI-dimension regarding stakeholder engagement (section 3.4) like, for example,:

• What does that mean for the selection of stakeholders?
• Are emotions important?
• How do we address gender dimension as part of RRI dimensions (i.e. inclusion)?

• How do we deal with weak or marginalized stakeholders (e.g. bottom of pyramid)? Here we discuss frugal innovation.

  Enjoy!

Learning objectives

• Recognize the need for stakeholder engagement as part of RRI (section 3.2) 
• Understand the four-step approach for stakeholder engagement in general  (section 3.3)
• Analyse the implications of RRI for conducting stakeholder engagement including  gender/diversity issues (section 3.4)

Our case study for this module is Evolva: a bio-synthesis company that struggled with strong opposition by NGOs to their products. 

Questions for pondering

Here are some questions for pondering while studying:

• What would stakeholder engagement from an RRI perspective mean for your company? What would be the purpose? What would you have to do differently?
• Do you have the resources for RRI-stakeholder engagement?
• Do you know your key stakeholders and how to reach them when it comes to RRI?  Do you manage to define different  types of stakeholders in the RRI context  and their (conflicting) interests?
• Can stakeholder engagement also have negative impact on your company or on your innovation project?
• Do I know where to find the tools for stakeholder engagement?