four scenarios for nanotechnologies in the uk, 2011-2020

Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 2013Vol. 25, No. 5, 507–526, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09537325.2013.785510

Four scenarios for nanotechnologies in theUK, 2011–2020

Christopher Groves∗

ESRC Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability Sustainability and Society, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

The future social value of nanoscale science and technology (NST) has been repeatedly repre-sented as revolutionary. However, government and industry support for the commercialisationof NST has to confront four key areas of uncertainty: concerning potential hazards associatedwith applications, commercial viability, public acceptance and evolving regulation. Academicand policy responses have to date largely emphasised the need for adaptive and anticipatoryregulation, yet research which evaluates the prospects of success in implementing such mea-sures has so far been lacking. This paper contributes to remedying this lack by examiningdifficulties and opportunities which may arise around this regulatory agenda in the UK, withthe aid of a ‘policy Delphi’ exercise undertaken with a multi-stakeholder panel. It summarisesfour scenarios to aid policy-makers and technology strategists in the UK and internationally inthinking through how the future of NST innovation may be affected by factors associated withthe aforementioned areas of uncertainty.

Keywords: adaptive regulation; anticipatory regulation; Delphi; future scenarios;nanotechnology

Introduction

Scientific and regulatory uncertainties are inherent to technological innovation, the result of infor-mation deficits which, by definition, tend to accompany novel technologies (Collingridge 1980).Nanoscale science and technology (NST), some have argued, may usher in revolutionary techno-logical and social changes in decades to come. Current interest in NST on the part of industry andgovernments has been stimulated by these optimistic visions. The need to support the developmentof industrial uses of NST with adequate regulation has been repeatedly underlined throughout thelast decade (e.g. RS/RAEng 2004). However, the information deficit problem, many have argued,is particularly acute in the case of NST thanks to the wide range of applications in which its prod-ucts may be applied and the difficulties involved in life-cycle monitoring of nano-engineeredmaterials (Lösch, Gammel, and Nordmann 2009). Consequently, the value of adaptive and/oranticipatory regulation, sensitive both to the need to resolve scientific uncertainties and to theneed to avoid hasty top-down over-regulation, has been emphasised in the literature on gover-nance (e.g. Lee and Jose 2008). There has to date been little systematic examination, however,

∗Email: [email protected]

© 2013 Taylor & Francis

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of the prospects for implementing adaptive and/or anticipatory regulation in the industry, and ofpotential challenges to its implementation. By employing a ‘policy Delphi’approach, the researchreported in this paper contributes to remedying this deficiency. Using outputs from two roundsof multi-stakeholder consultation, four scenarios were constructed which explore the potentialimpacts of a variety of possible forms of adaptive and anticipatory regulation on the next decadeof nanotechnology development in the UK. These scenarios provide a tool for comparing andcontrasting differing strategic policy options for the adaptive regulation of NST which, whilehaving the UK industry as its primary focus, has international application.

The commercial environment

Promissory discourses regarding NST have mapped out certain key areas in which radical futuredevelopments are expected (Berube 2006), which have led to debates about the potential widerethical and social consequences of these ‘disruptive’ possibilities, and also about how best toregulate NST with these possibilities in mind (Renn and Roco 2006). More recently, however,this ‘speculative’ approach to addressing regulatory uncertainties has been criticised for over-estimating the degree to which NST represents a unified phenomenon centred on specific andimpending ‘game-changing’ developments (such as the advent of molecular manufacturing) andfor ignoring the wider social and ethical significance of relatively incremental developmentshere and now (Nordmann and Rip 2009). ‘De-futurisation’ (Zülsdorf et al. 2011) of the rhetoricaround NST has sought to refocus attention on these incremental developments, which havefor the most part taken place in areas such as coatings for cars and clothing, medicines anddrug delivery (Besley, Kramer, and Priest 2008: 553), medical diagnostics (Winter et al. 2001),cosmetics, agrochemicals, and electronics. Other areas of interest are ‘functional foods’ and foodpackaging (Lagaron et al. 2005), environmental applications like water purification and pollutionremediation (Zhang 2003; Savage and Diallo 2006), and renewable energy. Indeed, recent futures-oriented work on the next decade of global NST development has stressed how NST techniquesmay have considerable value in areas tied to sustainability, particularly with respect to water useand energy production (Roco, Mirkin, and Hersam 2011).

Nonetheless, even in the face of ‘de-futurisation’, uncertainties remain about the environment,health and safety (EHS) implications of NST applications, let alone their possible wider socialconsequences. These uncertainties fall within four broad areas (Kearnes and Rip 2009) – scientificknowledge, commercial viability, public acceptance (arising from mistrust of industry and reg-ulators), and regulatory (concerning how regulators should respond to the first three forms ofuncertainty). Formulating a coherent regulatory response is rendered difficult, however, by thereliance of regulators on incomplete scientific knowledge regarding hazards and exposure levelsthat may be associated with the wide variety of different applications of NST, together with thetransaction costs associated with high levels of statutory regulation. As a result, a move towardstypes of regulation which encourage good behaviour rather than punish bad (Webb 2004) – byfor example, encouraging information sharing and adaptive forms of risk governance – has beenpromoted as a solution to the ‘control dilemma’ affecting NST, and other emerging technolo-gies (Collingridge 1980). Among these are ‘soft law’ and corporate social responsibility-basedapproaches (Lee and Jose 2008). In addition, other approaches to governance have been identifiedwhich recognise that the inherent capacity of emerging technologies to produce surprises requiresthat regulation be based on more than just analytic capability and empirical research: to dealwith complex uncertainties, it also requires institutional capacities for self-criticism and learn-ing, multiple epistemological perspectives, and a general future-oriented approach that remains

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Four scenarios for nanotechnologies in the UK, 2011–2020 509

attentive to the possibility of surprises without fetishising particular speculative futures. Conceptsof future-focused, multi-stakeholder and iterative governance have been expressed in descrip-tions of ‘anticipatory governance’ (Barben et al. 2007), ‘responsible innovation’ (Guston 2006)or ‘responsible research and innovation’ (Von Schomberg 2011).

Regulation with these qualities requires elements of governance different to those that typify‘top-down’, statutory regulation. Among these elements are often listed codes of conduct (e.g.Bowman and d’Silva 2011), voluntary data-sharing between academia and industry on the onehand, and regulators on the other (Dorbeck-Jung 2007) and upstream and/or deliberative publicengagement (Kearnes, Macnaghten, and Wilsdon 2006). Some of these elements (together withstandardisation and certification of products) have been brought together in the proposed EUpolicy framework of responsible research and innovation or RRI (von Schomberg 2011). The chiefcontribution these elements are expected to make to improving regulation is how they may helpcreate informational feedback loops which will support ‘continual “social intelligence” gathering’(Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 2008: 73), covering both any potential hazardsof new technologies and social concerns about their purposes and limitations, and thereby embednew technologies more firmly within society. The project of reshaping NST governance in this wayhas been seen as a test-case for how regulation appropriate to other emerging technologies may bedeveloped (Macnaghten, Kearnes, and Wynne 2005), such as synthetic biology or geoengineering.

Judging how successful such measures might be and what challenges they may face is noteasy – the problems with ‘studying the future’, a realm where there are no facts (Jouvenel 1967:649), have been well-documented within futures studies. Where scenarios have been used astools for examining the social implications of possible and preferable NST futures, they haveoften focused on disruptive and somewhat speculative technological ‘pushes’ (e.g. Centre forResponsible Nanotechnology 2007), although they have sometimes taken a more incrementalistapproach, while still allowing for ‘wild card’ events (e.g. Nanologue Project 2008). Other future-oriented work has focused largely on scientific and commercial needs, such as the need in theEU, UK and USA to deal with industry fragmentation and slow progress from basic innovation tomarket. These problems are seen as deriving in part from the dependency of NST value chains onsmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as well as on the sheer diversity of sectors in whichNST is expected to make a significant contribution. Such themes predominate in, for example, theUK Government’s nanotechnology strategy document for 2011–2014 (UK Government 2010),and the industry group Materials UK’s report ‘Nanotechnology: an Industry View’ (Materials UK2010), and are also reflected in a report spanning the next 20 years of NST evolution producedby the Department of Business, Industry and Skills’ Foresight programme in November 2010(Foresight Horizon Scanning Centre 2010). Meanwhile, a variety of recommendations to dealwith fragmentation in the US industry were made within the comprehensive future-oriented studyof NST trends published by the World Technology Evaluation Center (WTEC) in late 2010 (Roco,Mirkin, and Hersam 2010; Roco, Mirkin, and Hersam 2011).

To date, future-oriented academic and grey literature on NST has therefore not included muchsystematic reflection on the opportunities and obstacles which attempts to implement adaptive andanticipatory regulation might face. The relatively small amount of research which has been doneon attitudes to voluntary regulation among NST companies suggests that adaptive and anticipatoryregulation may run into difficulties because of the nature of the industry – and particularly owing toits reliance on enabling innovations produced by small start-up companies (e.g. Helland et al. 2008;Groves et al. 2011), which may face particular problems engaging in the kinds of reporting andother activities which form the focus of proposals for adaptive/anticipatory regulation.The UK andUS governments’relatively unsuccessful experiments with voluntary reporting schemes (Maynard

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and Rejeski 2009) provide further reason to investigate potential obstacles, and how scientific,commercial, regulatory and wider social factors may influence to remodel NST regulation.

Utility and validity of the Policy Delphi

The approach we employed to map potentially significant interactions between these factors wasbased on a particular interpretation of the Delphi method. By convening a group of experts inorder to consider the complex factors that may influence the future, Delphi exercises can overcomethe limitations on the cognitive capacity of individuals (Herbert and Yost 1979). Further, Delphipanels that use multi-stakeholder groups rather than simply relying on academic experts, can drawon the experiences of individuals who are directly involved with the problem from a variety ofbackgrounds (policy, business, etc.) (Moore 1990).

A limitation of some traditional Delphi methodologies, however, is how they prioritise reach-ing consensus across a number of rounds. To properly acknowledge the systemic uncertaintiesthat surround the developmental path of an emerging technology, a consensus-based approach isarguably not appropriate. In the face of great uncertainty, consensus may result from unquestionedand comforting assumptions that facilitate easy agreement regarding expected benefits and risks.With regard to emerging technologies, however, we face the kind of systemic uncertainties thatrender such assumptions dangerous, and a likely source of ‘scenarios of the past’ (Ramirez et al.2008, 271) where researchers simply extrapolate probable future states from an established bodyof knowledge, thus ignoring the possibility of disruptive novelty (Adam and Groves 2007) and/orcomplexities perhaps difficult for any particular perspective to register. An alternative approach,the ‘policy Delphi’, has been widely used as a facilitating instrument for public decision-making(Buck et al. 1993; Critcher and Gladstone 1998) by mapping dissensus across a range of view-points on a given topic. This may help results be more sensitive to the ineradicable uncertaintiesthat surround future technological trajectories. The product of a policy Delphi exercise may bedivergent, though related, scenarios that reflect different weightings given by participants to afixed set of factors (e.g. Tapio 2002) which represent the ‘genetic material’ from which the dif-ferent scenarios are derived. The utility of policy Delphi approaches has been confirmed by anumber of studies that have supplemented the iterative and reflective techniques that characterisethis approach with other techniques, such as disaggregative cluster analysis (Tapio 2002; Varhoand Tapio 2005; Rikkonen and Tapio 2009).

Nonetheless, the utility of such approaches is highly dependent on the degree to which theyintroduce new information into reflections on the future. As noted above, trying to establishhow probable future outcomes are may tend to make scenarios reflect established knowledgerather than sensitise them to possible surprises. Policy Delphi-style approaches may, by contrast,answer only to a criterion of plausibility. At the same time, the trap of simply repeating commonknowledge under the sign of ‘plausibility’ must be avoided in order to explore ‘uncomfortableknowledge’ (Selin 2011, 238). Practitioners of the Delphi method, in whatever form, must alwaysguard against the simple repetition of the familiar in place of informative insights that cast newlight on or overturn received wisdom, as well as a range of other problems, such as the impunityconferred by anonymity, difficulties involved with checking accuracy and reliability, and the timeburdens typically imposed on participants (Landeta 2006).

Methodology

The Delphi exercise we conducted used an online questionnaire constructed using the open-sourcesurvey tool Limesurvey, chosen for the high degree of question design flexibility it offers. The

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Table 1. Sample profile.

Case No. forcluster analysis ID Age Gender Sector

1 18 25–35 Male Policy (national or devolved government)2 19 36–45 Male Business (including trade associations)3 20 25–35 Male Academic (social sciences)4 21 56–70 Male Academic (social sciences)5 22 46–55 Female Business (including trade associations)6 23 46–55 Male Academic (natural sciences)7 25 46–55 Male Academic (natural sciences)8 26 25–35 Male Academic (social sciences)9 28 56–70 Male Policy (consultant, advisory organisation, think tank etc.)10 29 25–35 Male Civil society organisation– 30 25–35 Male Academic (social sciences)– 31 36–45 Male Business (including trade associations)11 32 46–55 Female Policy (consultant, advisory organisation, think tank, etc.)

questionnaire was hosted on a secure server, and participants invited from an initial list of 161experts identified through literature searches and previous research (Groves et al. 2011). The initialcontact list included participants from all sizes of NST company (from micro to multinational) aspossible, together with trade organisations. It also included individuals from central governmentand regulatory agencies, consultancies, natural and social academic science, and civil societyorganisations (CSOs). It was anticipated that a relatively low response rate would be achieved,owing to well-attested factors such as the relatively high time requirements of Delphi (Landeta2006) as well as to the level of social science interest in NST in recent years, which may have ledto participation fatigue among time-poor SME actors within a relatively small UK industry. Withthis in mind, the final sample (see Table 1) was chosen to represent as many stakeholder groupsas possible, without allowing any particular group to predominate. The rationale for this was tomaximise opportunities to map divergences among judgements.

A final sample of 18 participants was identified and invited to complete the first round ques-tionnaire. This questionnaire was built around the distinction, often employed in futures studies,between preferred and probable futures (Bell 2003), encompassing the period 2011–2020. Partic-ipants were invited to select up to five from 20 NST sectors (see Table 2) in which they anticipatedthe highest commercial and social value applications would emerge. With the chosen applicationsas indices of preferences, participants were then asked in the rest of the questionnaire to con-sider how probable futures might affect these preferences. Questions relating to the scientific,commercial, public acceptance and regulatory factors that might shape these probable futureswere posed. The response options offered for each question were carefully framed to reflect theresults of previous research on potential institutional barriers and opportunities to adaptive andanticipatory regulation in the UK environment (Groves et al. 2011). Questions were designedto collect quantitative data, employing either tick-box selections from a variety of independentoptions or Likert scales that registered judgements about the negative or positive influence a factormight exert. Questions were also accompanied by open-ended prompts for qualitative responses,in which respondents were invited to justify their answers and, in order to counteract tendenciesto repeat ‘common knowledge’, asked to consider potential interactions between different factors.

Thirteen questionnaires were received, including a substantial amount of qualitative material.Figures 1–6 summarise the quantitative data on preferred futures (Figure 1) and the potential

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Table 2. NST sectors and sub-sectors used in Delphi questionnaire.

1. Cosmetics (and other consumer health)2. Energy efficiency (consumption or production)3. Food: “food enhancement” applications, including additives & supplements4. Food: packaging (including e.g. sensors)5. Food: preparation (including surfaces, antimicrobials, etc.)6. ICT: further miniaturisation of components, increase in memory storage density, etc.7. ICT: novel computing (e.g. quantum computing, molecular computing)8. ICT: novel semiconductor devices (e.g. optoelectronics)9. Industrial applications (e.g. materials for aerospace or automotive body parts, building construction,

refining)10. Medical: diagnostics, imaging11. Medical: drug delivery12. Medical: pharmaceuticals (including medical antimicrobial applications)13. Metrology14. Military applications (body/vehicle armour, weaponry, etc.)15. Pollution reduction/Environmental remediation16. Natural resource use efficiency (e.g. water filtration)17. Catalysis (e.g. automotive fuels)18. Renewable energy applications (e.g. printable solar cells, hydrogen fuel cells etc)19. Sports goods20. Textiles

effects of scientific, commercial, regulatory and social perception factors on the future of NST(Figures 2–6).

A second round followed, to encourage stakeholders to reflect on their own assumptions andthose of other participants. A personalised report on the first round, examining respondents’preferred futures together with each of the four sets of ‘probable future’ factors was emailed toeach respondent. Each report included a tailored set of open-ended questions designed to invitethe respondent to reflect on how interaction between the various probable future factors mightchange preferred futures. Following the return of responses in this second round, a second analysisphase was undertaken, employing disaggregative cluster analysis tools provided within SPSS 18(Tapio 2002; Rikkonen and Tapio 2009). The clusters produced in the final analysis were usedas the basis of the final scenarios. The clustering method selected for this study was hierarchical,agglomerative clustering, employing the furthest neighbour rule for linking clusters and Euclideandistance as a measure of association. The results selected for analysis were those illustrated inFigures 2–6 – data indicating the degree and direction of influence assigned by participants todifferent factors in shaping NST innovation.

Several considerations regarding a cluster analysis approach for creating scenarios, includingits limitations, should be noted. Such an approach is by no means strictly deductive in nature.Instead, it is inductive and iterative. It typically requires analytical parameters to be adjustedin order to produce a maximally informative set of scenarios after an initial run – if too fewscenarios are produced, too many areas of divergence will be glossed over; if too many areproduced, important trends may be missed. Further, the final number of scenarios can cause otherissues to arise. For example, a two-scenario result represents the future in over-simplified, binaryterms. A three-scenario outcome, by contrast, invites the audience to consider one as a moderateoption between two extremes. It is for these reasons that at least four scenarios might be (as inthis study) preferred, in order to allow any audience to consider each scenario comprehensively

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Figure 1. Comparison of expected value of applications with expected concerns (regarding risks and/orregulatory gaps) about these applications.

and in comparison with a range of other options. Cluster analysis thus requires a good deal ofinterpretative labour in order to successfully avoid potential shortcomings (Tapio 2002, 93).

Of the 13 questionnaires received, 11 contained no missing answers and were thus suitable forquantitative cluster analysis. The dotted lines in Figure 7 indicate the points at which six (light grey

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Figure 2. Commercial environment drivers – total score (bottom) vs consensus/dissensus (top).

line) and four (black line) clusters of cases (case numbers correspond with those given in Table 1above) emerge from the data. It is evident from this diagram that the four-cluster solution avoidstoo much diversity of cases, compared with the six-cluster solution (where clusters containingonly one case are still evident). In Figure 8, the clustering process is represented as a dendrogram.

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Figure 3. Expectations of progress on hazard/risk knowledge base.

Here, reading from left to right, vertical lines represent process stages at which cases are mergedinto clusters. Merges 2, 3, 4 and 5 yield four clusters, where the relative distances between theclusters appear more or less equal. Stage 6 marks the point where only three clusters are left. Asstated above, choices between specific solutions may introduce a degree of subjectivity. Here,four clusters are preferred to three, for the reasons given above.

The four scenarios

The four narrative scenarios created as a result of the analysis described in the previous sectioncombine, as we have noted previously, preferred and probable futures. Further, all were constructedupon the assumption that economic difficulties in the USA and EU will continue, creating an envi-ronment for innovation characterised by continued constrained availability of credit alongside awillingness on the part of governments to seek new ways to stimulate innovation and manufac-turing industries. Drafting these scenarios involved a careful interpretation of the relationshipsbetween these different drivers and particularly of how qualitative responses from Round Twomight qualify views registered in Round One.

In relation to the key elements of governance that, as we noted in our literature review, generallytypify adaptive and/or anticipatory regulation (and which are incorporated within the EU’s RRIframework), several key loci of dissensus emerged within the quantitative and qualitative data fromRound One. These loci, and especially the qualitative data associated with them from RoundsOne and Two, subsequently served as the main basis for finessing scenarios from the resultsof the cluster analysis. For example, with reference to the commercial environment for NST,we see in the top half of Figure 2 that high levels of dissensus were evident around the value ofreporting schemes for the kinds of data-gathering required by adaptive and anticipatory regulation.

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Figure 4. Regulatory environment drivers – overall ranking (bottom) vs consensus/dissensus (top).

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Figure 5. Potential future developments viewed as having generally negative impact on stakeholder attitudes.

Figure 6. Developments seen as likely to have a positive effect on the social value of NST.

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Figure 7. Clustering cases as vertical icicle plot.

Qualitative evidence on these issues demonstrated strong views on whether data-gathering couldever be promoted via regulatory schemes, whether voluntary or mandatory:

Voluntary schemes, however much they may be advocated by industry negotiators and consulteeswhen under threat of statutory measures, are loose and lead to uncertainty in the market. (ID28, seeTable 1 above)

I think a mandatory scheme would be expensive for firms to implement (documentation, independentaudit, review, etc.) and difficult to verify. Because of the above, I don’t think data for a voluntaryscheme would be forthcoming. (ID26)

Public funding schemes are one way in which strategic coordination for innovation based on the‘pull’ of social priorities, rather than on identifying potentially profitable ‘pushes’ from the tech-nological base, may be promoted. These were seen by some as unlikely to produce positive resultsin a straitened economic climate ‘in the current climate there is likely to be little interest in directcoordination of research efforts toward societally defined research needs’ (ID30), and ‘artificial’composition of collaboration via consortia-focused funding will likely lead to ‘duplication andinefficiency’ (ID21).

The top half of Figure 4 indicates that high levels of dissensus were evident regarding the regu-latory value of public engagement. Some respondents saw engagement as key to building supportfor NST innovation, ‘absolutely key to developing market pull for new technologies’ (ID29),

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Figure 8. Clustering cases as horizontal dendrogram.

Figure 9. The four scenarios.

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Figure 10. Qualitative comparison of the four scenarios (market size vs visibility).

and/or adding social value to NST innovation, with technologists needing ‘to win acceptancethrough clear presentation of their work, and careful attention to objections’ (ID28). Others sawclear limitations to the usefulness of engagement as a means of technology assessment, giventhe complexities of the information which would need to be processed by participants: ‘riskassessment is a theoretical construct which is immensely difficult to communicate in practiceon a consistent and useful basis’ (ID32), and as bringing non-negligible risks of its own, whichindustry would respond negatively to, based on scepticism about ‘the public’s ability to be ableto absorb information about NST in a rational, non-hysterical form’ (ID26).

From these loci of dissensus, opportunities and challenges for adaptive, anticipatory regulationthat shaped the narratives of each scenario were developed, drawing on qualitative views within acluster on the probable influence of the four factors, and relating these to the specific applicationsjudged of highest value within it. The scenarios therefore represent four answers to the question ofwhat specific influence the same set of factors may have on different preferred future technologicaloptions. (Full versions of the scenarios are available in the final project report (Groves 2010).)

We now give a brief overview of each of the four scenarios (Figure 9) for the years 2011–2020which are compared qualitatively above in Figure 10 based on market size for NST applicationsversus the general social visibility of nanotechnologies.

Scenario 1: Conflicting priorities

• NST becomes more visible, thanks to controversies over ‘uninformative’ labelling of productscontaining nanomaterials and increased expectations about renewable energy applications.

• Strategic support has failed to move innovation away from paths that represent, in a constrainedeconomic climate, low commercial risk for larger companies further down the supply chain

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looking to commercialise products that incorporate new materials or utilise new processes.While being lower risk, these may not address wider social priorities.

• Wider regulatory developments (e.g. the failure of the EU to set a realistic carbon price) havenot provided significant support for investment in socially valuable applications (e.g. renewableenergy).

• Public debates regarding labelling and other transparency issues increased awareness of tensionsbetween the promised social value of nanotechnologies and the commercial reality.

• Regulatory gaps affecting socially valuable applications and knowledge gaps have made com-mercial risk difficult to reduce. A grant-supported mandatory reporting scheme designed togather information about new nanomaterials entering the market may be a promising source ofenvironmental, health and safety (EHS) data.

• The setting-up of a Commission on the Impact of Emerging Technologies (CIET) has led to aseries of successful engagement activities, which have increased public enthusiasm for NST,but also led to frustration at what are seen as unrealised promises.

Scenario 2: Fragmented innovation

• The government put in place early in the decade efforts to identify commercially viable andsocially useful technology areas for strategic support, to counteract industry fragmentation.These were identified by examining wider regulatory and other drivers, such as transport policyon electric cars, new guidelines on the environmental impact of new housing, and the ongoingneed to reduce treatment costs in the National Health Service (NHS).

• Government has sponsored an industry working group to develop ways to build capacity (intoxicology and risk assessment) across the industry to anticipate and manage longer-termhazards and risks.

• Legislation providing a limited framework of product end-of-life legislation (on the model ofthe EU’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive) was passed. This was expectedto have a negative effect on innovation, but this was not observed.

• A coalition of consumer groups, companies and government bodies responded to the introduc-tion of cosmetics labelling with a sustained programme of publicity and information on thehealth benefits of nano-sunscreens, with very positive effects.

• Funding has been made available through a variety of channels for companies working in themultitude of sectors and sub-sectors where NST is still expected to have significant commercialimpact in coming years. Nonetheless, progress in commercialisation is largely piecemeal andslow.

• The next sector with potential for significant public visibility – and for controversy – is widelyseen as agriculture and food. Will this be addressed in the same reactive way as the controversythat emerged over sunscreens earlier in the decade?

Scenario 3: Responsible commercialisation

• NST is relatively invisible, yet increasingly ubiquitous across a range of sectors. Labellingfor cosmetics and food was not introduced earlier in the years 2011–2020, and the uses ofNST in these sectors remained largely unpublicised. Companies in general have not enteredsignificantly into upstream and/or deliberative public engagement activities anywhere in thesupply chain.

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• Nonetheless, building on initial moves by government agencies, industry associations have beeninstrumental (in partnership with social scientists and some civil society organisations (CSOs))in developing codes of conduct and other measures focusing on encouraging companies tocollaborate more on anticipatory life-cycle analyses of risk, which in turn have led to morecommercial collaborations.

• Food technologies have seen negative reactions from CSOs and the public, with many largercompanies directing investment away from food enhancement and related technologies as aresult. This has not, however, created any noticeable negative public attitudes towards ‘nano’as such, which remains an increasingly ubiquitous yet invisible suite of enabling technologies.

• Innovation has largely been channelled into applications with significant social value, includingmedical technologies and solar power.

• There has not been heavy emphasis on strategic direction from government: companiesthemselves have collectively steered towards areas with high social value.

• There has yet to be any large-scale public debate over the uses to which NST is being put. Thenext decade (2021–2030) is expected to see genuinely disruptive technological advances in solarenergy. This raises questions: will the largely industry-led forms of soft regulation developed inthe last few years be robust enough to cope with any societal issues that do arise, in the absenceof any significant continuation of public engagement efforts around NST? Might the hithertoinvisible soon become highly visible, and what might be the consequences for public trust?

Scenario 4: Retrenchment

• NST has a significant social profile – but for the wrong reasons.• Government and industry bodies were unable between 2011 and 2014 to shape any coherent

strategic programmes for defining strategic priorities. While recognising, in reports publishedin 2012, the need for more industry collaboration and for public engagement, there was nowillingness on the part of industry or government to take responsibility for these issues.

• Controversies over nanomaterials in cosmetics, food uses and military technology wroughtreputational damage to the industry and to regulators from 2013 on, following the EU’s intro-duction of labelling in cosmetics. A perceived lack of transparency on the part of regulatorsand industry was magnified by newspaper campaigns on the widening uses of NST, especiallyin food and agriculture.

• Attempts to close knowledge gaps around the potential hazards of common nanomaterials havebeen piecemeal, relying chiefly on a new voluntary reporting scheme. Concern has focused onthe use of metal oxides in consumer products. The EU took action to phase out the widespreadanti-microbial use of nanosilver in 2017, impacting one of the few high-growth markets forNST products outside electronics.

• Investment has continued to flow into applications that are relatively low-profile, low risk andhigh-profit areas, such as electronics and advanced materials engineering.

• Innovation areas once thought likely to be of high social value have seen little or no growth• Has 2011–2020 been a ‘lost decade’ for NST?

Discussion

We noted previously that the Delphi panel saw little prospect of a disruptive NST future in the2011–2020 period occasioned by a radical new technical paradigm (such as molecular manu-facturing). Without such a technological push, the scenarios remain incrementalist in character,

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perhaps raising the suspicion that, by settling for plausibility they may risk repeating commonknowledge. However, as Scenario 3 (in particular) and Scenario 2 (to a lesser extent) show,incremental technical advances, linked to specific regulatory and commercial developments, maythemselves open up the prospect of disruptive or destabilising futures. As a result, the scenariosas a whole invite the reader to consider how far the possible futures for the NST industry whichthey describe are characterised either by flexibility and resilience, or by rigidity and brittleness.

Scenarios 2 and 4 represent situations that exhibit perhaps the most marked continuity with theinnovation environment described in the Materials UK and UK Government documents discussedearlier. In these scenarios, NST innovation is relatively brittle, because of the failure of nanotech-nologies to become sufficiently embedded within society, a chief goal of adaptive and anticipatoryregulation as recommended by, for example, von Schomberg (2011). An important factor here is,in both cases, a perceived lack of incentives, from the point of view of government and business,to generate wide, deep and ongoing public involvement in assessment both of strategic needs, andof the adequacy of particular applications to fulfil these needs.

Scenario 4 in particular revolves around a failure of both particular applications and strategicpriorities to chime with wider social values. Rigidity derives from a perceived lack of incentiveson the part of government and of industry for creating collaborative efforts on data-sharing, aswell as on the social assessment of NST. Without such efforts, attempts at making regulationmore flexible – by, for example, creating a new voluntary reporting scheme – have been merelyreactive in nature. Ongoing innovation in ‘safe’ areas shows that NST is anything but witheringon the vine. Nonetheless, higher rates of innovation and commercialisation in these areas havebeen bought at the cost of low social embeddedness and low resilience: the benefits of NST areseen as chiefly for luxury goods manufacturers rather than society at large.

Scenario 2 demonstrates more flexibility, thanks to two factors. First, wider regulatory andsocial factors outside the NST industry that could create market pull (such as the need to decar-bonise energy production and reduce healthcare treatment costs) have been identified. Second, thegovernment-sponsored and industry-led development of new risk analysis methodologies bettersuited to NST applications. Nonetheless, government and business once again have seen morerisks than benefits in wider engagement activities, and have failed to seize opportunities presentedby the case of sunscreens to take public technology assessment activities further.

By contrast, scenarios 1 and 3 represent situations where NST has achieved higher degrees offlexibility and resilience. In Scenario 1, concerted pressure on the government to lead on strategicpublic engagement in response to controversy over nano-labelling considerably increased trans-parency in government and industry. While engagement-led public debates demonstrated a greatdeal of frustration at slow progress on identifying and meeting what were seen as key socialpriorities for NST, the result was nevertheless increased social acceptance of NST as a meansof meeting these priorities. Trust has also been built by a grant-supported mandatory reportingscheme, which has contributed to an energetic expansion of the knowledge base for regulation.Innovation here has been slower, yet promises more and wider agreement about the direction inwhich it should move. Scenario 3 describes how an alternative flexible governance frameworkmight come about, driven by collaboration between government and industry and energised byindustry associations in particular. The development of better and more anticipatory risk man-agement within the industry and between it and regulators has led to a re-aligning of innovationpriorities also, towards high social benefit, lower risk applications. Still, this has been done with-out a consistent programme of transparent communication, much less deliberative engagement –indeed, some might argue that the flexibility won through fostering industry collaboration hasonly been possible because public engagement has not been a priority. Yet such a developmental

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524 C. Groves

path is not without vulnerabilities: building flexibility by building up some institutional capac-ities at the expense of others may leave these institutions unbalanced in the face of unforeseensurprises.

Conclusions

Overall, the four scenarios highlight the need to be prepared for trade-offs, at the strategic level,between rapid but potentially fragile (and perhaps fragmented) growth, and resilient, sociallyembedded but slower growth allied to increased transparency. Such slower growth may requirebuilding public engagement into efforts to identity strategic priorities and assess risks and uncer-tainties. The key obstacles to creating flexible and resilient forms of adaptive and anticipatorygovernance therefore lie in how regulators, governments and industry can best be encouragedto avoid a ‘fast, fragile and fragmented’ future. We close by commenting briefly on the widersignificance of these results and on the research needs they highlight.

Although this research has focused on the specific factors that have bearing on probable NSTfutures in the UK context, the problems which characterise the UK industry are more widely felt,as in the case of industry fragmentation in the EU and USA (Roco, Mirkin, and Hersam 2010).The sources of flexibility and rigidity described in the scenarios also may well be encounteredelsewhere, with local variations – as indicated, to some extent, by Helland et al.’s (2008) survey ofSME attitudes to voluntary regulation in the EU. This research may therefore mark a starting point,from which comparative analyses of different national and international contexts, designed to mappotential obstacles to adaptive and anticipatory governance, could usefully extend reflection onthe scenarios presented here. In addition, NST has been seen as a test case for innovation in how‘emerging technologies’ more widely are regulated, and indeed, as a way forward in thinkingabout the social implications of the much-heralded ‘convergence’ of nano-, bio- and informationtechnologies. The extent to which rigidity and flexibility, brittleness and resilience in fields suchas synthetic biology may derive from the kinds of interactions we have presented in the scenariosdescribed above presents a further starting point for additional research.

Notes on contributor

Christopher Groves is an ExternalAssociate of the ESRC Centre for Business Relationships,Accountability Sustainabilityand Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University. His research focuses on how people and institutions negotiate and deal withan intrinsically uncertain future shaped by global environmental change and accelerating technological innovation.

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four scenarios for nanotechnologies in the uk, 2011-2020

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