Open innovation and ethics – a matter of trustworthiness, accountability, and genuine benefit for those involved

Current developments within the EU indicate several key ethical challenges related to how the CCI community can participate in and benefit from open innovation. ekip has investigated issues related to CCI innovation, inclusion, diversity and the involvement of CCI in policy making processes. Among the challenges, lie also opportunities.

Nicola Osborne

In July 2025, a proposal for the EU’s future budget – the Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) 2028-2034 was presented. Although it indicates a significant increase in budget for the CCIs, there is still reason to look at its associated conceptual framework.

For example, in the article ”AgoraEU: Reframing Culture as a Force for Democracy?” research expert Elena Polivtseva notes that the proposed Agora EU emphasizes the significant contribution that CCIs make to the EU’s identity, inclusive and participatory governance, active citizenship, equality, and non-discrimination. However, at the same time, Polivtseva questions whether this significant contribution is adequately reflected in the new funding instrument.

Three key ethical challenges

Taken together, these developments indicate several key ethical challenges related to how the CCI community can participate in and benefit from ekip and from the open innovation it aims to nurture. Some of these challenges are particularly important given the underlying shape and character of the CCIs – typically small SMEs, who often work in decentralized ‘swarms’.

According to ekip partner Nicola Osborne, Edinburgh University, three challenges are particularly important for ekip to address:

• How do we ensure we are supporting impactful and sustainable CCI innovation?
• How do we ensure we are nurturing inclusion, inclusive innovation, and a diversity of perspectives?
• How can we ensure that CCI innovation has an authentic voice in policy making?

Supporting Impactful and Sustainable CCI Innovation

One of the biggest challenges in innovation discourses is what constitutes an ‘innovative’ idea or business model, and how this impacts creative businesses and roles. This is currently most visibly a challenge in AI where, at the same time as recognizing the significant potential for AI in specific processes and tasks that support creative innovation and efficiency, there are also serious concerns about the exploitation of creative effort – particularly in the context of generative AI.

According to Nicola Osborne, this implies that a priority consideration for ekip is to ensure that our own methods for developing policies – and interventions that may emerge from them – are thoughtful about the framing of ‘innovation’ in the CCIs. Our approach needs to include an understanding of both the benefits of creative disruption, and the real risks of potentially encouraging or endorsing practices counter to European CCIs’ rights and the valuing of their work.

Nurturing Inclusion, Inclusive Innovation, and a Diversity of Perspectives

In considering how to develop open innovation policies that respect and sustain CCIs, the ekip approach is also informed by the need to foster inclusive innovation, in a broad sense. Historically innovation, particularly in the technology sector, has frequently been dominated by a narrow range of people and experiences.

It is therefore crucial to ensure that diverse voices are encouraged and present in CCI innovation contexts. This means ensuring diverse representation across creators and innovators, across the audiences for whom new concepts are proposed, and ensuring diverse representation in the data or content that shapes the new products, services or models that emerge through innovation (e.g. as explored in ekip’s Inclusivity in Video Games Industry policy theme).

Ensuring CCIs Have an Authentic Voice in Policy Making? 

Policy making focused on CCI and policy making around innovation have often been siloed. This is partly because of – but also contributing to – preconceived ideas of the societal versus the economic value of cultural and creative innovation. This is especially the case in comparison to other types of scientific, technological or business innovation.

According to Nicola Osborne, whilst this approach acknowledges the immense cultural and societal values of culture and creativity, this siloing hugely undervalues the significant economic potential of the cultural and creative industries and CCIs crucial roles in innovation across other sectors.

“It is thus critical that CCIs have an opportunity to offer their authentic voices to innovation policy making processes and discussions. In addition, this inclusion in the process of policy making must extend to innovation policy beyond those directly and explicitly targeting CCIs, since they play crucial roles in innovation across the economy.”

Manifesting ekip’s Ethical Values in ekip

To address these challenges, ekip has developed guidelines on how to deal with them in the various parts of the ekip Engine. They focus on three areas:

• Robust and accountable methods and materials, including the ekip Knowledge Bank
• ekip community – ensuring open invitations to activities, collaboration with networks
• Design of collaborative activities – making space for all voices, iterative process

However, Nicola Osborne indicates that CCIs also need to understand the benefits of sharing what you do.

“Open’ innovation doesn’t mean handing away your intellectual property but is more about being part of a wider conversation, community and network that works through reciprocity and thoughtful sharing where appropriate. There are plenty of examples across other areas of industry where open innovation, and selective collaborative efforts have greatly strengthened both the collective wellbeing of the ecosystem, but also the individual development of businesses taking some of these innovative ideas forward in the wider market.”

Of course, central to that working well are notions of trustworthiness, accountability, and genuine benefit for those involved. These are aspects that underpin the importance of ensuring all our approaches and methods for ekip are ethically grounded and hold trust and credibility. Not only for CCIs but also for policy makers to have real and positive impacts on the CCIs and the wider EU – both economic and societal.