When I was a kid, I loved technology. I couldn’t get enough of tinkering around with it. The weekly electric shocks I experienced didn’t bother me at all. As I got older, I realized that technology – like fire – has two faces. On the one hand, it’s a wonderful tool for warming, cooking, and making many useful things; on the other hand, if left unchecked, it can become a horribly destructive force. The love of technology was joined by a new unwelcome sensation: worry.

This ambivalence accompanied me through all the stages of my career: in pharmaceutical research, in the development of robotics labs, in business development for a research center, in tech transfer for universities, and in mentoring for start-ups. Always, the two questions burned inside me:

• How can we design innovations so that they truly serve people?
• How can we avert possible harm to society and nature?

With the advent of autonomous systems, these challenges become even more acute. I told myself; “You can’t put off responsibility, you can only take it on.”

That’s why I founded innovethic.