Katharina de Melo from the Department of Management presented a contribution at the 11th Responsible Management Education Research Conference (RMERC) on responsible innovation and the competences that future managers need to be equipped with to successfully implement this concept in practice.
Responsible innovation put into practice
Her presentation addressed the question of how corporate innovation processes and outputs can be designed with corporate responsibility in mind and what competences (future) managers need for this. After a brief introduction to the concept of responsible innovation, she presented two examples of companies that have made the principles of responsible innovation the cornerstone of their operations:
- AppNps, a Spanish company in the nanotechnology sector
- Yoti, a London-based IT company
Katharina de Melo analyzed the competencies of the key individuals in the two companies that enable such implementation in the first place. In her conclusion, she referred to the concept of “Sustainability Competences”. In the context of responsible innovation, these need to be expanded by a competency that meets the demands of innovative activity. This would enable (future) managers to deal with uncertainties and balanced creativity to implement responsible alternatives to stop-and-go decision-making or the safety-by-design approach in innovation processes.
International exchange for responsible management
The RMERC is organized annually by one of the partner organizations of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) network. It provides a unique platform to advance the academic discourse on teaching responsible management and creates opportunities for exchange among representatives of PRME partner institutions.
This year, the conference was organized by the Berlin School of Business & Innovation and took place in the German capital from 23 to 26 September 2024. Over 100 participants from around the world discussed global challenges of management education in the context of social, economic and environmental changes. Katharina de Melo attended as a representative of the newly founded Competence Center for Sustainability and represented FHWien der WKW, a long-standing PRME member.