The project "Towards responsible innovation: science parks as an engine of change" has collected the opinion of 140 people on innovations developed by four Espaitec companies
This initiative promoted by the Vice-Rectorate of Research and Transfer of the Universitat Jaume I, through the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit, has highlighted the usefulness of opening innovation processes to participation and dialogue with the different affected social groups. The project has collected through surveys and discussion groups the evaluations and opinions of a total of 140 people about the products and services developed by four companies of the UJI Scientific, Technological and Business Park (Espaitec).
Specifically, the project has had the participation of companies Four eighty, mobile application development and other digital transformation products; SemanticBots, specialized in the design of conversational platforms based on chatbots with artificial intelligence; Zeus Smart Visual Data, a company that offers solutions that unify big data data sources and translate them into multiple panels to have a complete view of the information in real time through dashboards; and Proyecto Kryptonita, specialized in the development of R&D activities in the food sector.
The four companies showed their willingness to participate in the project after a first phase of training on the so-called responsible research and innovation (RRI) model carried out at Espaitec. Based on the analysis of the activity and services of these four companies, communication actions were established with the main groups affected by them. Specifically, three discussion groups were held in which 20 people representing different social groups participated, such as consumer associations, people with functional diversity, the elderly, students, technology and teaching experts, etc. In addition, an online survey was carried out through the UJI social networks in which 120 people participated, especially students. Through these actions, opinions were collected on four areas linked to the companies' activity: transportation apps, chatbots, smart visual data and food allergies.
Both the people participating in the discussion groups and in the surveys have valued participation positively and around 80% have stated that this type of actions contributes greatly to the improvement of R&D&i. For their part, those responsible for the participating companies consider the experience very enriching and very useful to improve their current and future developments.
"A project like this has allowed us to know in direct testimony what expectations the user has, what things would improve and what benefit they are getting from technology, in our case mobility applications," explains David Hernández, communications manager at Cuatroochenta. . Along these lines, Hugo Ferrer, CEO of SemanticBots, emphasizes the benefit for the company of knowing what the people affected by the technology they develop to adapt to their needs really need. «We can have a product concept based on what we believe they need, but what really adds value to us is knowing first-hand, through surveys and interviews, what we can provide them and how we are going to do it in the future» says Ferrer.
Likewise, another aspect that the professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the UJI and researcher of the Kryptonite Project, Santiago Luis, highlights is the growing importance that research and innovation processes will have responsible for the advantages it presents. «In our case, we have been surprised because it has helped us more than we expected. We believe that we can advance even further on this path and that it will not only provide us with an improvement in the design of our work for the future, but it will also help us to face new tasks that we had not considered performing," he points out. the investigator.
The project, which has the support of the Department of Education, Research, Culture and Sports of the Generalitat Valenciana, has sought through these actions to apply the science communication model to promote RRI developed in recent years by researchers and researchers from the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit (UCC+i) of the UJI and the Participatory Ethics and Democracy research group. The results of the project will be collected in an open access online publication.
Access the video summary of the project
