Author(s)

PING YAN, WIM RAVESTEIJN

Abstract

This paper starts with two pieces of news from 2013 about Dalian Port, one was about its green port construction and the other was about the port’s Arctic sea route development. What are in the two pieces of news brought us into focus on the term of responsible innovation, and this research especially shows that Dalian Port is developing its own version of responsible innovation, in response to its own needs and in line with the general conditions in China, rather than applying a western concept. With the exploration of the special pattern of responsible innovation of Dalian Port, this paper highlights two interesting technologies as case studies: the emergency pool project and the onshore electricity project. The first case shows that if we take the concept of responsible innovation as some kind of standard to evaluate the construction of Dalian Port, we could say that the port meets the requirements of being a responsible innovative port; the second case demonstrates that later on, with the development of the port, it has formed an internal approach of implementing the ideas of responsible innovation with its own way of communication and deliberation in the aims of green port construction. The conclusion of this research is that the Dalian Port development has gradually evolved from trajectories that might meet some of the requirements of (western) responsible innovation to the port inventing its own version of it, consisting of an environmental and government-oriented way of responsible innovation including deliberation with stakeholders.

Keywords

responsible innovation, Dalian Port, emergency pool, onshore electricity