JERRI – “Joining Efforts for Responsible Research and Innovation”

 Description: JERRI was an EU project (2016–2019) focused on implementing RRI (including the governance dimension) in two large research and technology organizations: Germany’s Fraunhofer Society and the Netherlands’ TNO. The project serves as a case study in how institutions can internalize ORRI principles. JERRI worked on each RRI key (ethics, gender, open access, public engagement, science education, governance), setting specific goals and pilot actions in the organizations. For the governance dimension, this meant creating or improving structures for sustainability and social responsibility in decision-making processe – for example, integrating RRI criteria into project evaluation and establishing cross-cutting committees to oversee RRI progress. JERRI demonstrated that with management buy-in and iterative learning, even large institutions can change their governance to be more open and responsive.

 Key Resources: The JERRI project deliverables (available on its website and CORDIS) document the process and outcomes. These include RRI action plans for Fraunhofer and TNO, which list governance innovations like new ethics guidelines, stakeholder panels for research agenda-setting, and incentives for researchers to pursue RRI goals. The Fraunhofer IRB summary of JERRI clearly lists the RRI dimensions it addressed (including governance) and notes that these dimensions needed to be “firmly anchored within scientific institutions”. It also describes JERRI’s mutual learning approach and the pilot activities implemented for each dimension.

https://irb.fraunhofer.de/de/leistungen/governance/open-innovation/jerri-en.html#:~:text=applied%20research%20in%20line%20with,currently%20promoted%20by%20the%20EU

 How It Helps Researchers: JERRI’s experience provides a blueprint for researchers and research managers in other institutions who aim to promote ORRI. It shows practical steps: e.g., conducting an internal gap analysis, getting leadership commitment, and starting with pilot projects (like organizing a institute-wide “RRI day” or incorporating societal impact in promotion criteria). For individual researchers at Fraunhofer and TNO, JERRI meant new opportunities to engage with society (through pilot public engagement projects), better support for open science, and a clearer expectation from top management that responsibility is part of research excellence. In a broader sense, case studies like JERRI reassure researchers elsewhere that institutional transformation towards responsible governance is possible – and provide tested ideas and inspiration for how to do it.