Highlights on the Risk Governance for Key Enabling Technologies: From Risk Denial to Ethics

Discovering new processes, investing in new products, expanding into new markets, innovating, and differentiating are all about taking risks. Although risk-taking and scientific advancement are at the heart of technology development and commercialization, other social and humanitarian factors are also critical to the success or failure of a technology’s widespread adoption and use. Notably, this includes consideration of ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) that frame a technology in terms of its normative societal value – not just by its technical capabilities (Calvert & Martin 2009).