White Paper
Values, Ethics and Innovation
Rethinking Technological
Development in the
Fourth Industrial Revolution
August 2018
World Economic Forum®
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Authors:
Thomas Philbeck
Head of Technology, Society and Policy, World Economic Forum
Nicholas Davis
Head of Society and Innovation, Member of the Executive Committee,
World Economic Forum
Anne Marie Engtoft Larsen
Knowledge Lead, Fourth Industrial Revolution, World Economic Forum
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Contents
Introduction 4
Towards a human-centred approach 5
A. Adopting a systems view of technologies 6
B. Appreciating and shaping the moral role of technologies 7
C. Engaging with a wide variety of stakeholders 9
D. The need for new disciplines 10
Achieving transformative innovation 11
A. New tools 12
B. New skills 13
C. New partnerships 14
D. New institutions 14
Conclusion 16
Endnotes 17
Bibliography 18
4 Values, Ethics and Innovation
Introduction
Technologies enable us to live longer, healthier, more fulfilling
lives. Since the first Industrial Revolution in particular, the
development, commercialization and diffusion of new
technologies have vastly expanded opportunities for people
around the world. They have also generated riches, both
quantitative and qualitative, for industries and societies,
increasing the real average global wage by at least 2900%
since the
The technologies emerging today promise further value,
both economic and social. For example, artificial intelligence
alone could generate between $3 trillion and $5 trillion
across nearly 20 industries,2 and blockchain could help
revolutionize humanitarian
Humankind, however, is only just beginning to realize
how technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution are
fundamentally challenging our ideas about the world and
are able to bring about undesirable externalities. This goes
beyond headline-grabbing concerns about robots taking
jobs, cybersecurity disasters or existential threats from an
artificial superintelligence. The fact is, technologies already
widely deployed are slowly fracturing social cohesion,
widening inequality and inexorably transforming everything,
from global politics to personal identities.
No one fully foresaw or intended these outcomes. However,
they make it harder to deny that the influence of these
technologies on society reflects how they were developed
and deployed. The recent debate about data collection on
social media that exploits people’s vulnerabilities exemplifies
how technologies embody the values and interests of their
makers and how this can impact us in potentially harmful
ways.
As Mark Benioff, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer,
Salesforce, USA, remarked at the World Economic Forum
Annual Meeting 2018 last January, the task of regulation is
to set true north. It is not just about what companies and
governments create and do, it’s about how they create
and do it. The moral role of technologies that concerns the
values and ethics of technological development must be
addressed at this critical moment in history, and industry is
asking for
“The values and ethics of
technological development must
be addressed at this critical
moment in history”
Rethinking the processes of technological development is
needed, asking first what long-term future is wanted, and
then how to orient technological development towards
achieving it. Technologies cannot decide for people what
constitutes the good life. The United Nations 2030 Agenda
for Sustainable Development represents a step in this
direction. It recognizes that technologies will play a role in
whether the Sustainable Development Goals are reached,
and establishes a multistakeholder “Technology Facilitation
Mechanism” to maximize the
The World Economic Forum is also pioneering a future-
oriented agenda – one that promotes responsible
development and the adoption of new technologies, and
drives a higher quality of life with greater public participation
in how technologies are employed – by taking seriously the
roles of values and ethics in technological development.
Leaders from multiple sectors must now come together to
guide the development and deployment of new technologies
that will further values, such as environmental stewardship,
the common good and human dignity. To fight growing
inequality and resulting populism, greater awareness of
technologies’ impact on human rights is required, as
well as their more inclusive integration into societies and
economies.
This White Paper is part of the Forum project on Values,
Ethics and Innovation. It expands on the call to action for
values leadership in Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution
(Klaus Schwab and Nicholas Davis, 2018). The first section
of this paper argues that society and technology develop
in tandem, with technologies shaping and embodying
societal values, and calls for a human-centred approach to
technological development. The second section identifies
and describes the new tools, skills, partnerships and
institutions required to achieve transformative innovation –
namely, innovation that no longer widens the gap between
the haves and have-nots, and that facilitates technological
advance in line with social progress.
All stakeholder groups stand to benefit from this approach.
Governments can re-establish trust in their governance of
technologies by better aligning them with societal values.
Industry leaders can hope to develop new markets, attract
new investment and create more positive engagement with
customers. Civil society can claim a role in shaping the
preservation of rights and freedoms through the design of
societally aligned technologies. And citizens will have greater
potential for self-realization.
Technologies continue to be seen as part of the solution to
many complex global challenges in the 21st century. They
are also capable of taking society forward in an inclusive,
sustainable and positive way, if the right approach to their
development is taken. This is a pressing issue after 30 years
of stagnating wages, with 80% of the reduction in labour’s
share of national income attributed to
Technological and economic progress can no longer be
assumed to be aligned with social progress, and data
from many European countries and the United States,
in particular, suggest material conditions have improved
much more than the quality of The human story over
the next half century will turn largely on how well societies
succeed in collectively defining their priorities, engaging
essential questions about values and ethics, and aligning
technological development accordingly.
5White Paper
Towards a human-centred
approach
How people think about technologies matters. This is not
simply because technologies are the primary contributor
to economic growth worldwide. It’s because technologies
shape people, and people shape technologies. This
relationship not only impacts research agendas, it also
impacts investment flows, business models and the content
of education systems.
The two most widely held views of technologies among
current business leaders and senior policy makers fail
to reflect the complexity of our relationship with these
technologies.
The first widespread perspective approaches technologies
as mere tools that are intrinsically and unquestionably
aligned with greater opportunity. The second prevalent
view regards history as driven by technological progress,
with people powerless to shape its direction: in this view,
technologies are inevitable and out of human control.
Neither of these views, though pervasive, is ideal nor fully
accurate.
The lack of a more critical comprehension of technologies,
and their moral role in society, reduces our ability to
make informed decisions about the development and
application of powerful new approaches, particularly with
those technologies that blur the lines between human
and technological capabilities, such as machine learning,
biotechnologies, neurotechnologies, and virtual and
augmented reality.
A more balanced and empowering perspective recognizes
technologies as capabilities that interpret, transform and
make meaning in the world around us. Rather than being
simple objects or processes that are distinct from human
beings, they are deeply socially constructed, culturally
situated and reflective of societal values. They are how
we engage with the world around us. They affect how
people order their lives, interact with one another and
see themselves. Far from an academic observation, this
more nuanced view has practical importance for strategic
needs as well as implications for successful governance of
technologies.
“To build a just and equitable
society, the process must start
with people – with their logic,
ideals, experience, empathy and
collaboration”
This perspective opens up space for critical reflection on
the question of how societies should govern technologies
that pose ethical challenges and may have undesirable
influences on societal priorities. It also provides ground for
conversations about technology and values trade-offs and
their impact on business and society. Moreover, this view
allows for a better examination of technologies at different
levels – from broad technical architecture to integrated
personal applications. Most critically, it acknowledges that
taking up these challenges involves decisions about values
and uncertain outcomes.
Part of the challenge is that the full impact of technologies is
difficult to ascertain when they are still emerging. But when
technologies are mature, embedded in social and economic
infrastructure, those impacts are difficult to This is
known as the Collingridge dilemma. The United States has
tended to respond to this dilemma by prioritizing innovation
as a core value, thus delaying regulation and focusing
on products and outcomes. In Europe, a precautionary
approach focused on process has prevailed. A classic
example here is the different approaches to genetically
modified
Policy development routes that focus on process rather than
outcomes have their advantages. Reflective, deliberative
and participatory approaches can more effectively embed
values and ethics in technological development. The EU
General Data Protection Regulation, a recent example of
policy developed with ethical challenges in mind, requires
organizations to consider privacy from the initial design
stages through to the end of the product development
Focusing on processes as well as outcomes is increasingly
needed as technologies such as artificial intelligence,
geoengineering or gene editing have the potential to change
the world profoundly and irrevocably. Waiting until they
are fully developed and deployed to try to understand and
shape their impact is simply not feasible. Institutions and
organizations are currently underprepared to address the
complex issues stemming from progress in these fields.
“The most widely held views of
technologies fail to reflect the
complexity of our relationship
with them”
As mentioned previously, industry is asking for guidance
here. Among global business leaders, even in the
technology sector, the question is not whether there
should be regulation, but rather what type of regulation
and accountability are most appropriate. During his Senate
Testimony in April 2018, Mark Zuckerberg stated that “the
real question, as the internet becomes more important in
people’s lives, is what is the right regulation, not whether or
not there should be regulation.”11 Industry leaders, as well as
legislators and civil society leaders, are rapidly appreciating
that technologies are having an effect on societal values in
ways that can be negative.
Making progress in governing technologies requires
recognizing that technologies embody values. But it is
not enough to simply acknowledge that the development
and use of technology is inherently political, or that
technologies come with built-in biases. As soft and hard
forms of governance are created through policies and laws,
individuals and organizations working with new technologies
6 Values, Ethics and Innovation
must engage actively and thoughtfully with the values they
embody and influence. To do this effectively, a human-
centred approach to technological development is called for
that recognizes the tension between seeking efficiencies and
realizing human values.
A human-centred approach to technologies means never
losing sight of one central question: How can technologies
enable a meaningful future for humankind?
Neither technologies nor markets can answer this question
on their own. People cannot realistically support products
and services that align with their values if access to them is
too inconvenient or too expensive. Instead, guidelines and
policies that fold societal values into technologies during
their development must be established, so people are not
incentivized to choose products that ultimately work against
the common good. If this basic tension in technological
development is ignored, the chances of unnecessary social
discord will be increased, as will its uncomfortable political
consequences.
As philosopher of technology Peter-Paul Verbeek relates,
“A real technocracy comes about when technologies
implicitly answer the question of the good life for human
beings.”12 To build a just and equitable society that is more
interconnected and more inclusive, the process must start
with people – with their logic, ideals, experience, empathy
and collaboration.
Society – which is to say, all of us – must figure out how
technology can empower, create meaningful opportunities,
and enhance an individual’s potential and agency.
A human-centred approach cultivates contextual and
emotional intelligence to guide technological development
based on values and ethics. It raises awareness of issues
throughout the development process, supplies practical
ways of addressing values-related and ethical challenges
when they arise, and works to craft technologies towards
positive ends for society. A human-centred approach means
taking on a “co-development” mindset, paying attention
to the process through which technologies and societies
recursively influence and form each
Taking on a human-centred approach involves adopting
three complementary strategies: first, adopting a systems
view of technologies; second, appreciating and shaping the
moral role of technologies; and third, engaging with a wide
variety of stakeholders.
A. Adopting a systems view of
technologies
The concept of co-development can help frame how
technologies and people act together to create new
technologies. People develop technologies in environments
that are simultaneously opened up and limited by how
existing technologies have shaped societal, political
and economic values. In turn, technologies now being
developed will open up or limit the environment for creating
future technologies by shaping society’s vision, priorities,
goals and
Take the automobile, for example. At the turn of the 20th
century, vehicles powered by steam, electric or internal
combustion engines that could run on gasoline or biofuel
all looked to be potential alternatives to horse-drawn
vehicles. Gasoline-powered vehicles gradually reached
socially transformative scale due to a wide system of aligned
interests, visions, technological advances, investments,
business models and political As this system
became entrenched, it directed and constrained choices,
incentivizing technologists to focus efforts on improving
gasoline engines rather than on innovating in steam- or
electric-powered transport. This “lock-in” has long-lasting
effects, and constrains problem solving as systems develop.
“Technologies inevitably
embody the values of their
creators, whether a small team
of engineers or a large group of
nations imagining a collective
destiny”
The automobile opened and closed choices in other,
broader ways. Widespread car ownership conferred
greater personal autonomy, for example, but led to the
design of cities that were challenging to navigate on foot,
by bicycle or by public transport. It enabled suburban
sprawl, with attractive individual places to live but ways of
life that arguably eroded social cohesion. Moreover, this
development contributed to deep economic dependence on
oil and to pollution that has severe health and environmental
consequences, including impacting climate change. None
of these impacts were inevitable; they were mediated by
collective choices, such as tax incentives and the relative
priority placed on building roads or mass transit systems.
Technologies impact entire systems – economic, social
and political. They shape world views, and world views
shape them as well. They are dreamed up and refined in
laboratories and workshops by teams of people. Their
development, just as anything else, is subject to social
factors,16 such as tribalism, water-cooler politics and gender
discrimination. A systemic view of how values and ethics
become part of the technological development process is
needed.
7White Paper
Figure 1 illustrates a systemic perspective for thinking about
where and how values and ethics can find their way into
technologies and policy creation. Despite the tendency to
think of technologies as objects or tools, they inevitably
embody the values of their creators, whether of a small team
of engineers hoping to solve a technical challenge, or of a
large group of nations imagining a collective
Looking at technologies from this perspective can help
stakeholders shape the societal effects of technological
development. In fact, well-informed leaders and creative
executives already recognize the need for this and are
discussing opportunities for cooperative and collaborative
policy-making. The impacts of technologies, especially
B. Appreciating and shaping the moral
role of technologies18
Technologies have a clear moral dimension – that is to say,
a fundamental aspect that relates to values, ethics and
norms. Technologies reflect the interests, behaviours and
desires of their creators, and shape how the people using
them can realize their potential, identities, relationships and
While all technologies have some impact in this
regard, sometimes developers explicitly aim for a moral
impact; examples include the contraceptive pill,20 which was
intended to give women greater control over their bodies,
and the Internet, which was developed with the intent of
increasing accessibility as a goal. The Internet Engineering
Task Force (IETF), one of the main standards organizations,
states:
The Internet isn’t value-neutral, and neither is the IETF. We
want the Internet to be useful for communities that share
our commitment to openness and fairness. We embrace
technical concepts such as decentralized control, edge-
user empowerment and sharing of resources, because
those concepts resonate with the core values of the
IETF community. These concepts have little to do with
the technology that’s possible, and much to do with the
technology that we choose to
on policy, sustainability and social stability, are becoming
mainstays of global multistakeholder conversations. Thanks
to dedicated research over the last 30 years, more is
understood about how and where values and ethics are
relevant in the development process – from decisions about
infrastructure development to organizational incentives
to the imagination of schoolchildren. Figure 1’s outer
circle identifies key “inflection points” at which the right
stakeholders can be engaged at the right time. The inner
circle identifies some examples of how ethics and values
may be addressed, and the centre shows where all these
processes flow together, integrating into a wider set of
systems.
Figure 1: System Integration of Values and Ethics into the Technological Development Process
Fig 1. System Integration of Values & Ethics into the Technological Development Process
Silo
busting,
cross-disciplinary
teams
Shareholder
value metrics,
legal
frameworks
Embedded
ethical
research and
processes
Values by
design
Media,
political
discussion,
courts
Skills
development,
Investment
capital
strategy
values
alignment
Codes,
incentives,
Stakeholder
inclusion,
common good
priority
Systems
Integration:
Economic
Political, and
Social
Educational
Curricula
Economic
Incentive
Structures
Decision-
making and
Priority Setting
Entrepreneurial
Values
Technical
Architecture
Fundraising
and Investing
Organizational
Culture
Operational
Methodologies
Product
Design
Societal
Resistance
human
resources
Outer circle: Inflection points -
amplification opportunities for
embedding values in
technologies
Inner circle: Implementation
area examples for values and
ethics related strategies
Leadership
ethics courses
Source: Authors
8 Values, Ethics and Innovation
Broadly stated, the moral components of technologies,
such as the internet, explicitly influence what they can be
used for. More specifically, as argued by Corinne Cath and
Luciano Floridi of the Oxford Internet Institute, the values
undergirding the engineering decisions for the infrastructure
and software running the internet are passed on through
the functionality resulting from those How such
decisions are reached impacts the capabilities of the internet
far beyond the infrastructure and logical implementation
layers. Ultimately, they influence the internet’s economic and
social layers (Figure 2).
The following definitions guide the discussion of values, ethics and morals:
Values refers to the aspirations that societies hope to realize and keep as priorities for determining and guiding their
actions and choices. Examples of values include privacy, justice and well-being. The Forum’s values include protecting
human dignity, prioritizing the common good and committing to environmental stewardship.
Ethics refers to the attempt to discern “right action”. This means trying to decide which actions are permissible, justifiable
and in the interest of individuals or society – given that many decisions involve conflicting values, goals and desires.
An example is thinking about how algorithms create knowledge problems (such as misleading evidence or bias), how
they may affect people due to this, and what duties are required to remedy either the algorithm or its Various
frameworks for discerning right action prioritize different ends, such as consequences, relationships, personal character
and more. This aspect makes the field rich, complex and a continuous challenge for experts and practitioners.
Moral is used descriptively to indicate a relevance to values and ethics. It refers to norms, behaviours and practices
that are tied to how values and ethics issues are confronted and worked through, even if they are not always explicitly
mentioned or codified.
Figure 2. Social Layers of the InternetFig 2. Social layers of the internet
Content
Security
& Trust
Commerce
Access
Big data ethics
Search (neutrality)
Content policy
Cultural diversity
Cultural heritage
Freedom of
expression
Open data
Multilingualism
Global public
good
Online education
Behavioural
targeting
Cryptography
Hacking
Cyber warfare
Privacy and data
protection
Digital crime
Surveillance
Internet
jurisdiction
Identity
management
Encryption
Arbitration
Consumer
protection
Patents
Crypto
currencies
Ecommerce
Taxation
Free trade
Jurisdiction
Labour law
Online gambling
Capacity
development
Cloud computing
Standards organizations define and engineer the infrastructure and logic layers of the internet, upon which the social
and economic layers sit. The decisions made by engineers pass on the biases, goals, interests and aspirations of those
choices into the physical and software layers. Thus values pass through the technological infrastructure into the social sphere.
Convergence
Digital divide
ICT for
development
Internet
affordability
Net neutrality
Right to access
Rights of people
with disabilities
Women’s rights
Source: Based on ICANN, The Economic and Societal Layer of Digital Governance
9White Paper
Ibo van de Poel, Professor of Ethics and Technology,
Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, and Lambèr
Royakkers, Associate Professor in Ethics of Technology,
Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands, point
out that even when engineers focus narrowly on creating
economic value, the products they develop often have
fundamental societal impacts, such as increasing or
decreasing opportunities for marginalized populations: “In
this sense, engineering is an inherently morally motivated
activity. Changing the world for the better is, however, no
easy task and also not one that can be achieved on the
basis of engineering knowledge alone. It also requires,
among other things, ethical reflection and knowledge.”24
In their book, Ethics, Technology, and Engineering: An
Introduction, they outline the skills engineers need to
develop moral sensibilities, moral analysis, moral creativity,
moral judgement, moral decision-making and moral
argumentation. Decisions they make can include or
exclude potential users, based on factors such as disability,
educational background, gender roles or financial means.
Of course, engineers are not the only stakeholders
responsible for how technologies are developed. They
respond to decisions made by organizational leaders
and policy-makers, and incentives created by potential
customers. Unfortunately, many stakeholders are often
left out of the discussion and the development process.
Keeping with a human-centred approach, however, requires
involving a wider set of perspectives and considering
the outcomes for society – not only from the top down
through regulation, but also from the bottom up through the
attitudes, behaviours and actions of stakeholder groups.
C. Engaging with a wide variety of
stakeholders
Engaging a wide set of stakeholders who could be affected
by technologies is more than a moral obligation;25 it is good
business sense. Aligning systems and products with societal
priorities, and anticipating and forestalling potential negative
effects, can create reputational capital and lower the long-
term costs of dealing with social resistance. Thinking about
large stakeholder groups and their potential motivations
for caring about values and ethics can shed light on where
discussion is relevant:
Civic leaders and citizens are concerned with large,
social aspirations, such as equality of opportunity,
access to shared resources, transparency, procedural
fairness and a range of rights and freedoms: values that
culminate in a greater sense of well-being with a specific
cultural context.
Consumers generally welcome opportunities to choose
products aligned with their personal and community
values and eschew technologies that are perceived
to harm their interests. But if they can only influence
the process of technological development through
consumer choice, they may not have a meaningful
choice.
Engineers are also citizens, and many are concerned
about the impact of their work on society and the
environment. Darshan Karwat’s concept of engineering
activism is one Supplying engineers with
tools to address values and ethics gives them more
agency than simply focusing on compliance issues or
being constrained by economic incentives.
Executives, looking to create value for the organization
and society, care deeply about purpose and know
that meaningful work motivates employees, which is
reflected by the success and continued relevance of
True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership by Bill
Boards are interested in values and ethics to develop
trust within an organization and with partners, to
build reputation and to create stable and supportive
ecosystems and markets. With their guiding role, boards
are aware of issues, a critical factor in propagating an
organizational orientation based on values and ethics.
“Engineering and business
ethics often focus narrowly on
compliance and procedure rather
than on a broader duty to think
through the potential societal
impact”
Policy-makers are obligated to enable fair and
equitable marketplaces, involve citizens and create
more deliberative and participative governance
practices. They care about how values and ethics
are incorporated into processes for technological
development and outcomes for industry and society at
large because societal well-being is their putative raison
d’etre.
Educators are motivated to improve future citizens
and professionals through the study of values and
ethics. They are attuned to the way values and ethics
education can support intangible benefits for societies,
such as concern for the common good, building trust
and thoughtful deliberation.
Expecting that every stakeholder be informed about
and involved in each step of developing and deploying
technologies would obviously be unrealistic; so, too, would
the expectation that every stakeholder will have intentions
aligned with the common good or be a trained ethicist.
As explored in the next section, tools and techniques can
help stakeholders identify ethical issues, evaluate potential
choices, express their preferences and have them taken into
consideration. However, building the necessary skill sets will
require new resources, curricula, programmes, training and
disciplines.
10 Values, Ethics and Innovation
D. The need for new disciplines
Integrating a systems view of technological development
with an understanding of the moral components of
technologies and an inclusive process for stakeholder
engagement takes this human-centred approach beyond
any single discipline. New curricula and programmes of
study will have to be created and adopted for a world that
requires more from advancing technologies as they envelop
our environment and become integrated in our bodies.
This new reality needs new disciplines and new structured
approaches to values and ethics, especially in engineering
and business studies.
Structured approaches to values and ethics, based on
taking responsibility for other members of society, have long
been embedded in older professions, such as medicine
and law, and specifically in their training and education.
Their socially situated contexts meant the decisions of their
practitioners had long-lasting effects on the community.
Engineering and business schools have only just begun to
understand the socially situated contexts of technologies
and organizations they help to create and maintain. Both
disciplines need to embed a deep and nuanced practice of
thinking beyond execution and towards social responsibility
and outcomes.
According to Rob Reich, professor of political science
at Stanford University, the imperative for educational
institutions is to focus on cross-disciplinary
He suggests that one approach could be having students
focus on philosophy, politics and engineering, a new PPE
curriculum,29 in order to begin training a new generation of
professionals that will encounter this overlap in real world
organizations.
In the last 10 to 15 years, engineering and business schools
have begun introducing mandatory ethics courses in their
curricula. Front-running universities are pushing lessons
from the social sciences into business and engineering
disciplines through textbooks, such as Engineering Ethics;
Ethics, Technology, and Engineering; and Philosophy of
Technology: An Introduction for Technology and Business
Students. Programmes in the Netherlands and Germany
have been particularly successful in creating cross-
disciplinary theoretical and case-based research.
Nonetheless, ethics courses for engineering and business
students often focus narrowly on issues of compliance and
procedure rather than on a broader duty to think through
the potential societal impact of one’s Clear and
consistent educational requirements have yet to emerge.
Ultimately, lessons need to reach beyond the university to
build individuals’ skills, so they can influence technologies
through their roles as users, consumers, citizens and
11White Paper
A. New tools
Soft governance tools may not be encoded in legislation,
but they do have the ability to shape technological
development. Standards, codes of conduct, oaths and
company policies are all good starts, but consideration
must go beyond simply adding a layer of aspiration. The
following six imperatives identify what needs to be done
as technologies are developed, and where businesses,
governments and the public need the tools to do more.
1. Involve others – Participatory tools are needed to
understand how a technology fits into stakeholders’
lives, engages citizens in policy-making and
incorporates external voices in critiques of the
technological development process. From “guerrilla
testing” to “journey mapping”, the UK government has
collated many such promising tools in its Open Policy
Making
2. Surface assumptions – Individuals and social groups
may not realize they work on different assumptions
about societal values and ethical concerns, especially in
environments lacking diversity in gender, background,
regional experience or other factors. For example,
decision-makers may wrongly assume that every city
resident would welcome a network of sensors providing
data about air quality, not considering that homeowners
in poor areas might justifiably worry about a potential
negative impact on their property values.
3. Determine consequences – Foresight tools, such
as horizon scanning and scenario planning, can be
extremely helpful in anticipating how a technology
may influence individual behaviour, how it fits into
a population’s “social and material arrangements”,
and what its “moral outcomes and consequences”
may The UK Government Office for Science, for
example, provides The Futures Toolkit for such foresight
4. Align incentives – Stakeholders can explicitly align
incentives at critical junctures by using more nuanced
methodologies that accompany technologies as they
are While many process tools already
exist, such as in responsible research and designing for
values,37 they are often regarded as options and not as
requirements.
Achieving transformative
innovation
These are not theoretical issues. Engaging with values and
ethics in technology is practical, accessible and essential
at the beginning of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Transformative innovation will enhance well-being for society
as well as bring economic value to businesses, manifesting
both tangible and intangible benefits.
Leaders looking for transformative innovation can find it
by shifting their perspective towards the human-centred
approach outlined in the first section. Adopting this new
perspective does more than clarify the role that technologies
play in shaping society; it brings a more comprehensive way
of increasing well-being. Three main sources of economic
value are at stake, but they require a broader outlook that
cultivates medium- and long-term benefits.
The first major source of value will come from building
trust through more attentive and inclusive processes of
technological development that prioritize multistakeholder
input. According to the Edelman Trust Barometer, industry
leaders need to rebuild trust and facilitate transparency
by safeguarding privacy, investing in jobs and focusing on
consumer Demonstrating commitment to the public
by involving those affected by technologies and attempting
to understand how business can further societal priorities
are steps in this direction.
The second source of value comes from widening the
market by authentically raising well-being. Developing
technologies aligned with societal values and the common
good, and promoting greater inclusivity and accessibility,
has the ability to affect and provide more people with a
higher quality of life, creating a more robust and resilient
marketplace.
And third, a larger market with increased trust between
actors spells the creation of surplus value through higher
quality of market participation and exchange. The lowering
of transaction costs, the willingness to take risks, and the
potential for the output of economies to be greater than
the sum of their parts are all dependent on the fostering of
an environment where values and ethics are incorporated
in such a way that they blend into the background of
technological development.
To do this effectively, however, business leaders and policy-
makers must create and implement new ways of working
collaboratively among employees and citizens, individuals
and institutions. Transformative innovation requires new
tools, new skills, new partnerships and new institutions that
can mould technologies to serve a collective vision of the
future.
12 Values, Ethics and Innovation
5. Facilitate decisions – Tools are needed to evaluate
risks and benefits to give leaders practical guidance,
helping them to make decisions at inflection points of
the technological development process.
6. Maintain flexibility – Technologies can meet
resistance as they grow and evolve in unexpected
ways. For example, how can companie s and citizens
constructively respond to the concern about addictive
“slot-machine” principles in mobile applications?38
Leaders need tools that help in conversations with
those affected and the ability to effectively address
undesirable outcomes.
Design thinking, a growing trend, has an excellent set
of tools that create flexibility in thought processes for
developing new technologies, as well as for organizational
needs. Tim Brown, Chief Executive Officer, IDEO, USA,
characterizes design thinking as “a human-centered
approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s
toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of
technology, and the requirements for business success”.39
Nesta, the United Kingdom’s National Endowment for
Science Technology and the Arts, has used design thinking
to help policy-makers contextualize policy development
around citizens and users. The same approach is applicable
to technological development.
Another example is the implementation of “The Signal
Code”, developed by the Harvard Humanitarian
The rights-based framework provides a clear way for
governments, the private sector and civil society to think
about what rights people have in humanitarian crises in
relation to the ethical challenges created by information
technologies and their
To realize the potential economic value as well as the
quality of life value – to push for truly transformational
change – institutions and companies need to know which
questions regarding values and ethics are worth asking,
as well as how technologies are impacting citizens,
consumers and communities. Developers and adopters of
technology must answer questions such as:
–– Who are the stakeholders involved and what is at
stake?
–– Whose values are driving this technology?
–– What values are involved with the technology at
this point in its development?
–– How do those values align with societal priorities?
–– Which value sets are in conflict?
–– Which ethical issues need to be addressed that
relate to the technology?
–– What is the best format for deliberation, exchange
and action?
–– How is technological decision-making related to
investment, social or regulatory pressures?
–– Which social groups might lose out from the
effects of the technology?
–– What recourse is available to those affected
adversely?
These questions have not always been given the proper
priority, but rethinking technological development and
engaging in a human-centred approach will require
rethinking current siloed practices.
13White Paper
Figure 3: Mapping Values and Ethics Tools and Frameworks
Fig . Values and Ethics Tools
S
co
pe
Time
Historical
analysis
Scenario
planning
Case
studies
Oaths,
codes of
conduct
Ethical landscape mapping
Embedded
ethical
research
Curr
icula
r exp
osur
e,
train
ing,
hirin
g pra
ctice
s
foresight
scanning
Ethical constructive
technology assessment
risk assessment
Source: Authors (for more on various ethical technology assessment strategies, see Kiran et al., 2015)
In
d
iv
id
ua
l
O
rg
an
iz
at
io
n
G
lo
b
al
Indeed, many existing tools can meet some of these
challenges, at least in part (Figure 3). Transformative
innovation, however, demands a systemic approach to
make sense of the ethical landscape and to apply principles
across the incentives, cultures, designs and constraints
that result in a finished product. New, more inclusive
methodologies – some in pilot schemes, others still as
theoretical options – look at technological development
from a broader view and address values and ethics issues
throughout the process. To make full use of these tools,
however, requires new skills.
14 Values, Ethics and Innovation
B. New skills
Much discussion already focuses on how the Fourth
Industrial Revolution is creating the need for new workplace
skills; automation replaces some jobs, significantly changes
the nature of others and opens up new opportunities
for people to create value. Investing in lifelong learning
opportunities is a commonly promoted strategy to help
labour markets adjust to this However, new
skills that assess the values- and ethics-related issues of
technologies are needed just as urgently.
Critical-thinking and problem-solving skills are necessary
but not sufficient. Collaborative thinking will be
increasingly important, relying on broad technological
competence which, in turn, implies more opportunities
to experiment with new technologies. The complexity of
converging technologies means that most are developed
in multidisciplinary teams and working environments,
requiring skill sets in science, humanities, business and
the arts. Thus, collaboration skills and cognitive flexibility
will be required on top of standard technical expertise. As
mentioned in the previous section, skills that apply new tools
and can facilitate their use within organizations will also be
highly desirable.
New skills are particularly required in crafting common
understanding, resolving conflicts, mapping systems and
overlaying them with ethical frameworks. For example,
understanding when aggregate outcomes contradict the
intentions behind individual actions is critical, as is being
able to parse complex issues, such as the desirable and
undesirable aspects of anonymity and encryption.
When anticipating the future, policy-makers and educators
must ask the right questions, beginning with: what values-
and ethics-related skills are needed now for dealing with
technologies?; will these skills be needed in the future?;
what value do they bring? The World Economic Forum’s
report, The Future of Jobs, identified the trends in skills
changes most desired by 2020, and ranked the top 10
(Figure 4).
Figure 4: Top 10 Skills are changing as the Fourth Industrial Revolution progresses
Source: World Economic Forum, Agenda, “The 10 skills you need to thrive in the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, 19 January 2016
In addition to technical and collaborative skills, stakeholders
need new models for framing technologies; with these, they
can challenge current structures so engrained that they go
unnoticed – for example, the assumptions about artificial
intelligence and robotics that initially considered automating
human tasks rather than augmenting employees’ skills and
capabilities.
Firms, governments and individuals stand to benefit from
understanding how to act on and respond to issues
involving values and ethics as they encounter ever more
technological crises. In relation to employment, for example,
it is not just the skills people have that are important – it
is thinking about how these skills provide meaning, about
the intrinsic value of individuals, and about how reskilling
protects and helps create a just transition for those affected
by technological
These skills can help everyone see where choices about
technologies can lead to unwanted outcomes and thus help
them to respond collectively. Moreover, cultivating new skills
around values and ethics is essential for building a collective
vision of the future, one that remains open to opportunity
and retains space for self-realization. And, critically for an
economic transformation, these skills can help to expand
economic models beyond financial and growth metrics by
“The complexity of converging
technologies requires skill sets
in science, humanities, business
and the arts”
15White Paper
paying closer attention to the vital role of intangible value for
society.
Furthermore, developing values and ethics skill sets can help
society anticipate threats, reveal conflicts between moral
stances, build a collective vision, cultivate responsibility
and accountability, and align business models with societal
priorities. Making best use of these new skills, however, will
depend on the quality of stakeholder partnerships.
C. New partnerships
Emerging technologies present business and government
leaders with a challenge: creating, shaping and
commercializing these technologies require groups of
people with specialized education, vision and business
acumen. Assessing their role in society demands the
involvement of stakeholders who lack these specialized
skills. Moreover, not all people whose inputs are needed are
likely to be found in the same place at the same time.
New models of collaboration that go beyond organizational
boundaries create value in four main ways:
1. Understanding what other stakeholders think and
how they act is necessary to develop technologies
that support their values. The needs of customers,
communities or members of product value chains
cannot be understood sufficiently through secondary
research. Traditional arm’s-length approaches to
consultation, based on surveys or requests for input,
often fail to surface deep beliefs and cultural values
critical to how a technology is perceived, used,
experienced and reinvented. Partnering with a group of
stakeholders around shared goals, risks and rewards is
often the only way to truly appreciate what drives and
challenges them.
2. Assessing and embedding positive values in the
development of technology will require human
resources that almost inevitably lie outside an
organization. According to economist Friedrich Hayek,
“the knowledge of the circumstances of which we make
use never exists in concentrated or integrated form”.44
Or, as Sun Microsystems founder, Bill Joy, stated, “No
matter who you are, most of the smartest people work
for someone else.”45 Companies cannot always solve
problems by hiring smart people from elsewhere. They
need to develop knowledge systems and partnerships
that incentivize ongoing, strategic conversations with
external experts who bring challenging perspectives and
constructive feedback that can help improve products
and services.
3. Partnering with external organizations can signal
seriousness. Partnerships are not easy. They consume
valuable management time and financial resources,
making them a credible indicator of legitimacy for
organizations investing in ethical approaches.
4. Working across organizational boundaries is the only
way to achieve systemic change. This is particularly
so in solving problems related to public goods or the
commons. For visionary leaders, partnerships can
transform entire industries. Successfully catalysing new
standards, spreading norms and contributing to public
policy all require commitment to external engagement –
often through institutional mechanisms.
D. New institutions
Institutions can spread new tools, skills and models of
collaboration among stakeholders. This helps to turn zero-
sum games into cooperation that creates both tangible and
intangible value for all through the alignment with societal
values. Traditional institutions, however, are struggling to
keep up with the complex, transformative and distributed
nature of emerging technologies. Governing responsibly in
response to the speed, scale, scope and impact of change
will require disrupting institutions by changing their own
incentives – or, in some instances, creating entirely new
institutions.
As institutions evolve in the Fourth Industrial Revolution,
they will have to assume four key responsibilities:
1. Protect and promote responsible innovation for a
sustainable and inclusive future
2. Build clear and fair rules for competition and create
incentives for players to perform in accordance with
societal values
3. Safeguard and serve vulnerable and marginalized
communities
4. Assess and manage systemic risks proactively that
derive from the impact of technologies
Building these institutions, either de novo or from existing
ones, will challenge governments and societies to work
more closely together. This especially concerns technologies
that could deploy government services or create perceived
risks for portions of society. Participatory models that
include citizens and social groups will be needed to ensure
fair outcomes that optimize benefits across stakeholder
domains.
Constructive public deliberation will be no less important.
Polarized discussion around technologies with no
opportunity to resolve conflicting viewpoints could fester
into political turmoil. Inclusive governance, participatory
processes and alternatives to cumbersome regulatory
schemes can turn the corner towards more effective policy
and public engagement.
Traditional institutions, however, will have to change.
Currently, they tend to act periodically, apply general
principles to specific cases, focus on objectives and
rules, monitor activities from a top-down perspective, and
incentivize by enforcing penalties. Newly configured or
engineered institutions must become more agile, inclusive
and iterative – acting when needed, judging when to
16 Values, Ethics and Innovation
apply existing principles to new cases or adapt principles
in light of new cases. They must focus on outcomes and
impact, and incentivize through influence to create intrinsic
Institutions need to implement agile governance principles
and engage stakeholders at each of the inflections points
of the technological development cycle (Figure 5). Building
the capacity of institutions to develop new regulation and
governance, including creating new business models and
incentives – from scoping and goal-setting to implementing,
iterating, assessing and evaluating – is paramount. The
willingness to experiment and try out diverse governance
mechanisms is the key to success in a dynamic
technological environment.
The World Economic Forum is taking this approach as well.
Applying agile governance principles and deliberation over
values and ethics issues is being integrated into its System
Initiatives and projects within the Centre for the Fourth
Industrial Revolution Network. The Network’s pilots offer the
potential to further explore the development and application
of values- and ethics-related skills, methods and tools.
Work within the Network involves nascent and growing
technologies, where many values and ethics components
are often undefined and/or under-regulated, or not regulated
at all. The Forum is committed to addressing values and
ethics in a cross-cutting way at these early stages because
it provides the greatest opportunity to profoundly influence
the future.
motivation and empower organizations and individuals with
responsibility and authority.
Figure 5: Inflection Points - Target Areas for New Institutional Engagement
Fig. 5 Inflection Points - Target Areas for New Institutional Engagement
Continuous Multistakeholder Input for Policy Development
Educational
Curricula
Entrepreneurial
Values
Decision-
making and
Priority Setting
Economic
Incentive
Structures
Technical
Architecture
Fundraising and
Investing
Organizational
Culture
Operational
Methodologies
Product
Design
Societal
Resistance
Source: Authors (for more on the inflection points, see Schwab and Davis, 2018)
17White Paper
Conclusion
The opportunities and threats created by emerging
technologies require leaders across business, government
and civil society to understand the importance of values and
ethics in technological development. This means taking a
conscious perspective of technological development that
prioritizes the values of society and acting accordingly.
Contrary to the common perceptions of the challenges
of working with values and ethics, taking them on in the
process of developing technologies is beneficial and, more
importantly, practical, accessible and essential.
The increasing attention given to how technologies can
support, undermine, influence and contravene societal
values is evidence of a shifting global consciousness
towards a more constructive view of technology, its
complexity and its impact on daily life. The saturation
of urban, rural and orbital environments with technical
infrastructure; the personal and professional needs for
connectivity; the advancement of computational capabilities;
the breakthroughs of biotechnological manipulation; and the
rapid scaling and dissemination of emerging technologies
have all contributed to this shift.
Continuing to treat technologies as merely objects, industrial
products or external forces prevents us from understanding
how technologies impact the world around us – their
cohesiveness, capabilities, models for employment,
perspectives on what is meaningful, and ultimately what
they value. We need to invest in a more grounded approach
to technological development that doesn’t lose sight of the
true ends of technological progress – social progress and
the well-being of humanity in terms of opportunities and
self-realization – and comprehends the difference between
material wealth and quality of life. This means investing
in the tools and approaches that have just begun to be
described in this paper.
In practice, rethinking technological development will
require taking a human-centred approach – that recognizes
how technologies and societies are co-produced – and
prioritizing a future that involves all stakeholders, fostering
the goal of greater social cohesion, trust and well-being.
It will also mean developing and investing in new tools
and skills, bringing together new curricula to shape future
generations, and building new institutions and partnerships.
This challenge is a systemic challenge, where progress
made in values leadership can positively affect both
technology leadership and governance leadership. In
Shaping the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Schwab and
Davis, 2018), leaders are tasked with developing systems
leadership through three components: technology
leadership, governance leadership and values leadership.
Taking on the imperative of working through values and
ethics issues is one pillar in the move towards transformative
innovation and responsible leadership in the Fourth Industrial
Revolution.
We need to invest in technological
development that doesn’t
lose sight of the true ends of
technological progress – social
progress and the well-being of
humanity
18 Values, Ethics and Innovation
Endnotes
1. D. McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality, 2016.
2. Chui et al., “Notes from the AI frontier: Applications and value of deep learning”, 2018. Available at
cial-intelligence/notes-from-the-ai-frontier-applications-and-value-of-deep-learning.
3. S. Ardittis, “How Blockchain can benefit migration programmes and migrants”, 2018. Available at
chain-can-benefit-migration-programmes-and-migrants.
4. N. Davis, “Better technology governance can help Australian society benefit from the Fourth Industrial Revolution”, forthcoming at https://theconver-
5. Paragraph 70 of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Available at
6. B. Keeley, Income Inequality: The Gap between Rich and Poor, 2015. Available at
en/.
7. OECD, How’s Life? 2017: Measuring well-being, 2017, p. 31. Available at
8. D. Collingridge, The Social Control of Technology, 1980.
9. J. Lau, “Same Science, Different Policies: Regulating Genetically Modified Foods in the . and Europe”, 2015. Available at .
edu/flash/2015/same-science-different-policies/.
10. Intersoft consulting, General Data Protection Regulation, “Art. 25 GDPR, Data protection by design and by default”. Available at
art-25-gdpr/.
11. Davis, forthcoming.
12. P.-P. Verbeek, “Resistance Is Futile: Toward a Non-Modern Democratization of Technology”, 2013.
13. See some examples of this shift in mindset through the impact of sociological and political studies dedicated to science and technology production
in Bijker, Hughes and Pinch, The Social Construction of Technological Systems: New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, 1987; S.
Jasanoff, States of Knowledge, 2004; H. Harbers, Inside the Politics of Technology: Agency and Normativity in the Co-Production of Technology and
Society, 2005.
14. See previous, as well as Bowman, Stokes and Rip, Embedding New Technologies into Society: A Regulatory, Ethical and Societal Perspective, 2017.
15. R. Volti, Society and Technological Change (8th Edition), 2017.
16. Latour and Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Construction of Scientific Facts, 1979.
17. See Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Pickering, 1995; Hughes, 2004; Adas, 2006; and Jasanoff, 2015; among others. Examples abound, from technolo-
gies’ role in cultural identity, dominance and hegemony to the collective creation of knowledge and collective imagination of the future. Although
contemporary textbooks on ethics and engineering often point out this situated development of technologies, the critical issues for the field remain
(how engineers are obligated to act, their responsibilities and the distribution of accountability).
18. Influential philosopher of technology, Peter-Paul Verbeek, raises the following answer to the question, Do artefacts have morality?: “If ethics is about
the question of ‘how to act?’ or ‘how to live?’, and technologies help shape how we act and live, there is good reason to claim that technologies
have explicit moral significance.” He argues in The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts that technologies are “intrinsically involved in moral decision-
making”.
19. Kiran, Oudshoorn and Verbeek, “Beyond checklists: toward an ethical-constructive technology assessment”, 2015. Available at
1080/.
20. White Junod and Marks, “Women’s trials: the approval of the first oral contraceptive pill in the United States and Great Britain”, 2002.
21. IETF, Network Working Group, “Request for Comments: 3935”, 2004. Available at
22. Cath and Floridi, “The Design of the Internet’s Architecture by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and Human Rights”, 2016.
23. For more on algorithms and ethics, see Mittelstadt et al., “The ethics of algorithms: Mapping the debate”, 2016. Available at .
com/doi/pdf/
24. Cath and Floridi, 2016.
25. P. Brey, “The strategic role of technology in a good society”, 2018. Available at
26. Karwat, Eagle, Wooldridge and Princen, “Activist Engineering: Changing Engineering Practice By Deploying Praxis”, 2015. Available at http://doi.
org/
27. B. George, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership, 2007.
28. Conversation and personal correspondence.
29. As opposed to philosophy, politics and economics, the current PPE subjects.
30. C. Mitcham, “Engineering Design Research and Social Responsibility”, 1994.
31. Many issues with institutional design can be referenced in Crow and Dabars’ Designing the New American University.
32. Edelman, “2018 Edelman Trust Barometer: The State of Trust in Business”. Available at
.
33. See the UK Government Open Policy Making toolkit. Available at
34. P. Brey, “From Moral Agents to Moral Factors: The Structural Ethics Approach”, in Kroes and Verbeek, The Moral Status of Technical Artefacts, 125-
142, 2014.
35. UK Government, Office for Science, The Futures Toolkit, 2017. Available at
uploads/attachment_data/file/674209/.
36. Verbeek, “Resistance Is Futile”, 2013.
37. For example, the Design for Values course offered by Delft University. See
38. T. Harris, “How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind — from a Magician and Google Design Ethicist”, 2016. Available at
global/how-technology-hijacks-peoples-minds-from-a-magician-and-google-s-design-ethicist-56d62ef5edf3.
39. IDEO, IDEO U Design Thinking courses. Available at
40. Greenwood et al., “The Signal Code: A Human Rights Approach to Information During Crisis”, 2017. Available at
files/publications/.
41. PLOS, “A Rights-based Approach to Information in Humanitarian Assistance”, 2017. Available at
based-approach-to-information-in-humanitarian-assistance/.
42. OECD, How’s Life? 2017, 2017, p. 83.
43. For more on reskilling opportunities, see Towards a Reskilling Revolution: A Future of Jobs for All, 2018. Available at
.
44. F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”, 1945.
45. B. Schlender, “Whose Internet Is It, Anyway?”, 1995. Available at
.
19White Paper
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21White Paper
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