Breakout session 5: Ethics by design – Shaping innovation ecosystems with human values
October 28th, 2026 — 17:00 - 18:00
Description
As technology advances across increasingly disruptive fields, questions of ethics and human values need to be addressed much earlier in the innovation process. Moving beyond reactive regulation, science parks, areas of innovation and innovation districts are putting this principle into practice, incorporating ethics by design into governance, services and ecosystem orchestration, to ensure technology serves human well-being, equity, and public trust before it is developed.
The examples cover different approaches to values-driven governance. In the São Paulo Innovation District in Brazil, a “Place Vision” provides a shared framework for decision-making, investor engagement and conflict resolution. Padua Innovation District uses a value-sensitive co-creative methodology to bring academic, industrial and civic stakeholders into open ecosystem governance. In São José dos Campos, the science park acts as an ethical filter for government-led urban sandboxes, while Espaitec in Spain has developed an “Ethical Toolkit” and a five-dimensional framework covering selection, guidance, validation, financing and projection ethics for incubation and acceleration management.
Speakers
