Risk Innovation… You what?! (Desparately seeking advice!)

Here’s something I’ve been chewing over for the past few weeks:  How do you capture succinctly the idea of developing innovative new approaches to identifying, assessing, managing and otherwise dealing with risks to human health?

What I’ve ended up with is “Risk Innovation” – but I’m not convinced it works.

So I thought I would see if anyone else had any other bright ideas!

This is the challenge in a nut shell:

When dealing with the possibility of substances harming people, there are well-established science-based approaches to identifying and quantifying the risks, backed up by a standard set of approaches to dealing with them (with regulation typically rising to the top of the pile).  But these aren’t always effective – and as technologies become more complex, development life cycles become faster and societal hierarchies shift, there’s going to be an increasing need to find new ways to deal with possible health impacts arising from substances.

In fact, the life cycle of new technologies is becoming so short that it won’t be long before they are superseded long before conventional approaches to assessing and managing risks have kicked in.

In other words, technology innovation has to be accompanied by innovations in how we handle risks, if things are going to get better rather than worse for us in the future.

This is a young area of research that is developing rapidly.  It’s stimulating, exciting and, above all, crucial to the success of emerging technologies (as well as dealing with new problems emerging from previous technologies).

But it doesn’t have a convenient “handle.”

“Innovation in risk identification, assessment, management and governance” gets to the nub of the idea.  But it is also on the soporific side of engaging.  Not to beat about the bush, it’s just not sexy!  The same goes for various other permutations that try to capture accurately the idea of developing new approaches to handling risk.

So what I’ve ended up with is “Risk Innovation.”

My problem though is that, while the phrase is catchy, it’s wide open to interpretation.  It could mean anything from innovative approaches to dealing with risk, to innovative ways of increasing risk – not something most self-respecting health professionals would want to be associated with!!

But what’s the alternative?  Or am I being over-sensitive here?

Any thoughts here (please use the comments area below) would be more than welcome.

Thanks!

Related posts:

1. Final program posted for the Risk, Uncertainty and Sustainable Innovation symposium

Tagged as: Communication, Emerging Technology, Risk