Innovation is dangerous---it has a litany of risks with various examples.

In recent years, policymakers have seemingly neglected that innovation has a direction, and usually take it for granted that ‘innovation is good’ and hence, ‘more innovation is better’. For example, when they directly compare the performance of countries using indicators such as R&D spending or patenting, more is assumed to be better. Understanding the downsides of innovation, and how those downsides are distributed, might therefore help inform better policy. This editorial, and the special issue, seeks to provide a bit more balance by giving space to suggestions that innovation is not always a force for good.

To do so, we discuss some dimensions we deem useful to conceptualise the link between innovation and its possible harmful effects (section 2); we present a (non-exhaustive) list of conceptually distinct types of harms (section 3); we then discuss three broad unanswered questions from a more practical to a more theoretical perspective (section 4) and, finally; we conclude presenting the papers of this special issue.

2. Dimensions of harmful innovation

This section sets out a (non-exhaustive) number of dimensions according to which innovation may be harmful. These dimensions can be seen as continuums rather than binary distinctions. Future research could add further dimensions to the ones mentioned here or could find an alternative arrangement of dimensions for sorting different types of harmful innovations.

2.1. Issues of scale: explorations by lead users vs the dependence of mass consumers

Small problems due to one-off explorations are generally accepted to be benign and acceptable. For example, small scale pollution from a pioneering scientific experiment is probably acceptable to most people. But if this scales up through the everyday habits of millions of consumers worldwide, harmful effects can accumulate and interact, and new problems can appear. The example of congestion and pollution is a classical case used by economists to illustrate that (public) goods have a capacity beyond which interference (or cumulative) effects become noticeable to then increase disproportionally (Rothenberg Citation1970). Similar effects apply in many other circumstances and political decisions about the impact of a technology may mistakenly be made by focusing on the initial circumstances, rather than the problems that emerge when the technology diffuses and is used at scale. In this vein, the adoption of new products and technologies can cause problems due to rising demand for key inputs, like the rapid growth in the demand for cobalt (a key input for lithium-ion batteries) causing social problems such as corruption, environmental pollution, extreme poverty and child labour (Conca Citation2020).

2.2. End-of-product-life considerations

Another dark side of innovation relates to end-of-product-life considerations, that are predictable from the start, but often ignored until the end. Examples include the disposal of nuclear waste, mining clean-up operations, and heavy metal leakage from the recycling of electronic waste. With new technologies, and especially technologies with long working lives, these end of life costs may be uncertain. In some instances, a new technology can reduce these costs, but in many others rising social expectations and more stringent environmental and health regulations can substantially increase costs over time.

Recycling can reduce the environmental impact of waste. However, if new materials such as plastics are relatively cheap, recycling can be prohibitively expensive compared to landfill or burning. In one example, from the UK, Westminster council sent 82% of all household waste – including that put in recycling bins – for incineration in 2017/18 (Franklin-Wallis Citation2019). Disposal problems are exacerbated in the case of planned obsolescence, where products have deliberately shortened lifetimes, or are designed such that they are impossible or difficult to repair.Footnote1 For example, Apple has been repeatedly accused of deliberately slowing its iPhones in order to increase the sales of new products, and restricts the repair of Apple products even in the case of fairly simple repairs (Svensson et al. Citation2018).

Despite the usual focus on the benefits of renewable energy, Hansen and Nygaard (this issue) provide evidence on the dangers. New technologies for solar panels cause problems of heavy metal disposal, in particular for lead, which is a potent neurotoxin. Many Sub-Saharan African nations lack capabilities to dispose of waste, and there are uncertainties about the longer-term environmental performance of solar panels. The recycling of hazardous materials is often done by the poor who lack equipment, protection, and political representation. Innovations that address one kind of pollution can create new problems, that fall on different people, and these costs should not be ignored, even if the overall improvement is substantial.

2.3. Features vs bugs: ‘unintended’ versus ‘unanticipated’ consequences

Innovations can be intentionally harmful, such as for example the atomic bomb, automatic rifles, electric chairs, or the ‘Spanish donkey.’ These innovations clearly cause great harm by creating new opportunities for individuals to more effectively carry out harmful intentions.

More in general, the introduction of new technology can lead to ‘revenge effects.’ Pesticide and antibiotic use can create conditions where new super-weeds and super-bugs evolve, air-conditioning increases external temperatures, and expanding roads can increase traffic and lead to more congestion. Tenner (Citation1997) sub-divides these revenge effects into rearranging, repeating, recomplicating, regenerating and recongesting effects.

In some cases, the harm from innovation comes not from regular use but from unanticipated accidents, such as Chernobyl. In other cases, the harm is an unintended yet anticipated outcome that comes from proper use. This harm can be well-known or hidden. A known side-effect of the proper use of cigarettes is lung cancer. A relatively little-known fact about shale gas production is that it produces considerable amounts of radioactive waste (Warner et al. Citation2013). Even the truck drivers disposing of this radioactive waste are not aware that their truckload is radioactive (Nobel Citation2020).

We have seen with digital technologies such as social media and machine learning, that things seen as dark sides – discrimination in applications and data sources or cognitive distraction – are part of the constitutions of technologies. It is convenient for innovators to label negative consequences as ‘unintended’, but they may be designed into the system – features, not bugs – or they may be deliberately unanticipated to avoid accountability (Stilgoe Citation2020).

2.4. Innovation to deceive or to escape regulation

Firms may lie about the toxicity of their products. However, if this is no longer possible, they may introduce new products that are not yet proven to be harmful (because it always takes time for the evidence to emerge). This type of innovation to escape regulation does not address the underlying problems, but merely delays regulation. For example, e-cigarettes are seen as an alternative to regular cigarettes, but they also contain carcinogens (Cotti, Nesson, and Tefft Citation2018). E-cigarettes seem to have public health benefits, if they replace conventional cigarettes, but they also create new problems and new behaviours. This seems to be an inherent part of the nature of innovation: complicated substitutions, uncertainty about benefits and risks, and new technologies that combine solutions with new problems. One might also mention here financial market innovations that deceive investors about the risks in their portfolios (Zingales Citation2015) or the expensive fees paid for active fund management that does not outperform passive funds.

Another example could be the food industry. On the one hand, food companies are hypocritical about their innovation, given their proclivity for slogans such as ‘same recipe since 1920’ or ‘grandmother’s secret recipe.’ On the other hand, food companies have introduced process and product innovations to replace high-quality ingredients with cheaper substitutes, while using misleading labels such as ‘natural flavoring’ (Woerner Citation2015). Many innovations in the food industry may be harmful. For example, artificial sweeteners are often introduced to reduce the amount of sugar in food. However, they can bring their own problems. Aspartame, for example, is an artificial sweetener whose long-term use has been linked to cancer in mice (Soffritti et al. Citation2007). ‘Processed food’ is a synonym for unhealthy food in many food guides.

Even more serious than innovation to escape regulation is innovation to deceive it. This is the case of Volkswagen, who intentionally programmed its diesel engines to give misleading measurements of NOx emissions during regulatory testing (see Jasanoff Citation2016).

2.5. Sharing the upsides and downsides of innovation

Another issue is related to the ‘North-South’ perspective. Rich countries develop new innovations that are applied across the world, then the rich countries notice that these innovations are toxic or harmful, and either move on to better alternatives or develop infrastructures to deal with the waste or simply export their waste (e.g. electronic waste). Poor countries, on the other hand, may not have the institutional structures in place to enable them to contain the problems.

Most academic research on innovation focuses on its production in R&D intensive sectors in rich nations. But this is a very misleading view of innovation. For most people, in most countries, for most of history, innovation is not something that was developed where they live to address their problems. Innovation is, instead, something that happens in other places, is adapted to the institutions and culture of those places and comes from those places. Its arrival can be very disruptive because it may not necessarily fit with the local environment, and the changes that are required can be experienced as an imposition.

In this spirit, Hansen and Nygaard (this issue) discuss the problem of solar waste in Sub-Saharan Africa. There is an interesting issue for public policy and normative social science about how the downsides of innovation are socially distributed both internationally and within nations.