Co-evolutionary scenarios: An application to prospecting futures of the responsible development of nanotechnology

Potentially breakthrough science and technologies promise applications which may radically affect society. Nanotechnology is no exception, promising many benefits through nano-enabled applications across multiple sectors and with the potential of affecting many parts of our society. At present, during its early stages, a wide variety of actors are anticipating both on the potential benefits and risks of the development of nanotechnologies and their embedment into markets and into society. Those wishing to coordinate and develop appropriate governance strategies for nanotechnologies need to consider both the wide spectrum of nanotechnology research and development lines, the governance landscape surrounding nanotechnology and the application areas it will affect, and how these may co-evolve with each other. This paper presents a research project that took the recent activities in and around the notion of Responsible Research and Innovation of nanotechnologies as an opportunity to develop support tools for exploring potential co-evolutions of nanotechnology and governance arrangements. This involved the inclusion of pre-engagement analysis of potential co-evolutions in the form of scenarios into interactive workshop activities, with the aim of enabling multi-stakeholder anticipation of the complexities of co-evolution.