Innovation is recognised today as a powerful tool for social, economic and even cultural growth and evolution. Yet, ‘innovation’ is often considered to be either an end in itself, or primarily a means of promoting socio-economic efficiency and increasing corporate profits. In the 21st century global village, however, there is a growing recognition of the need to not only ensure and encourage innovations as such, but also to ensure and encourage innovations that achieve specific societal goals, such as environmental protection, inclusiveness, sustainability, affordability, and competition. There is a need, therefore, to broaden the academic, socio-economic, cultural and political discourse pertaining to ‘innovation’: In addition to the current emphasis on efficiency and profits, there is a need to include ‘ethics’ (as understood in both eastern and western cultures) as a specific goal towards which societal and industrial innovation must aspire and adhere.

With the aim of expanding the dialogue pertaining to ‘innovations’ as such and that pertaining to the ‘type’ of innovations that we, as a global society, desire, the Munich Conference Series on Ethics in Innovations seeks to bring together experts and practitioners from a variety of disciplines, and from diverse philosophical and cultural backgrounds, to one platform to exchange ideas, practices, practical experiences and current academic research pertaining to ‘ethics’, ‘innovation’ and their interface in the 21st century global village. The conference series is envisaged as one that will continue for four consecutive years, each year taking up issues of ethics and innovation from a multi-disciplinary perspective, with a particular focus on (i) both eastern and western philosophy, culture/religion and legal history, and (ii) a specific technological focus area. In the first year, the focus is on the information and communication technologies (ICT) and will invite experts from India and Europe to discuss the underlying ethical issues from a multi-disciplinary perspective.