In this article we take a look at the work of the Observatory for Responsible Innovation, based at Mines ParisTech’s engineering school in Paris, France.

The Mines ParisTech’s Observatory for Responsible Innovation website carries a subtitle, “Innovation through Debate”, an aim that we at the Bassetti Foundation would share. This article (co authored by Jonathan Hankins and Annalivia Lacoste) would like to take a look at their work and their forthcoming conference about renewable energy and architecture on November 16th, at Mines ParisTech.

Since its creation in 2011 the Observatory has been focused on the topic of responsible innovation in finance, building an important network of bankers, researchers and regulators to discuss various issues around the idea of responsibility. November of 2011 saw the culmination of this work in the international conference “Debating Responsible Innovation in Finance”. Issues such as the responsibility of traders, bonuses, high frequency trading and new forms of the regulation were all discussed

This year has also seen the launch of the first edition of the Dufrénoy Prize, an award whose aim is to highlight and reward remarkable and outstanding initiatives in the area of responsible innovation in finance. The first Dufrénoy Prize was awarded to the Reserve Bank of India in June this year at the Ecole des Mines de Paris, whose activities and preventive dimension of regulation are considered a benchmark for other countries.

In January of this year the Observatory introduced the new topic for investigation of renewable energy and architecture. The project involved creating the 2012 Working Group, whose role is to address the specific topic of built-in renewable energy, or to be more precise the integration of renewable energy production into the building itself. A key objective this year is to clarify the implicit conceptions of social responsibility that underpin innovative solutions to local energy production.

The Working Group membership includes various researchers at Mines ParisTech, from architects to engineers, policy makers and energy suppliers. This year the group has organized various encounters with international experts, to explore different projects related to new forms of local energy production, the green industry in China, the wind turbine industry in Denmark, and the introduction of zero net energy campus in California (amongst others).

The Observatory also publishes the electronic review “Debating Innovation”, a compilation of articles and interviews related to these debates on their website which also hosts a multi-lingual blog.

The Observatory is currently busy organizing their next big event, the second annual international conference that this year will be about renewable energy and architecture. The conference will be held at Mines ParisTech on November 16th, and will be a day of debates with international experts, politicians, energy suppliers, architects and urban planners. Issues such as the production of built in renewable energy solutions on a European scale, energy delivery systems and the urban development of built-in renewable energy solutions, studies will be discussed through four roundtables and introduced by three different international cases.

You can register to this event and receive the official program by email to Ms Annalivia Lacoste, Project Manager of the Observatory for Responsible Innovation at annalivia.lacoste@mines-paristech.fr.

The Bassetti Foundation will be represented at the event by Scientific Director Francesco Samore’.

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(photo: Paris by luca.sartoni from Flickr)