This guide can be relevant and interesting for people in the tech industry for the following reasons:

• Enhancing Reputation and Trust: By engaging with society and understanding their needs and concerns, tech companies can build trust with their customers and stakeholders. This can enhance the reputation of the company and improve customer loyalty.
• Creating Social Impact: Through societal engagement, tech companies can identify social problems and create solutions that can positively impact society. This can help tech professionals to create meaningful and purposeful
  work, contributing to a greater sense of satisfaction in their careers.
• Staying Ahead of Regulations: The tech industry is often subjected to government regulations and policies. By engaging with society, tech companies can stay ahead of these regulations, contributing to a smoother regulatory
  process and potentially avoiding negative impacts on their business.
• Creating new Business Opportunities: Responsible tech innovation can also create new business opportunities, particularly in areas such as sustainability, social impact, and ethical innovation. By engaging with society and
  addressing societal concerns, tech companies can tap into new markets and create new revenue streams.

This guide is primarily intended for small, medium and large companies in the innovative tech industry, which have the necessary resources to undertake societal engagement. We also hope to inspire startups and individual entrepreneurs with this guide, but we are aware of the limited resources and therefore the suggestions in this guide might need simplifying or adapting. As many recommendations are resource demanding, we expect differences in how companies of different sizes can implement them in practice. Furthermore, we hope that the wider tech innovation network such as research and tech centres, industrial clusters and tech associations, might benefit from the recommendations in this guide. At the end of this guide, we provide an easy way to share the guide with your tech network, to let tech actors know that this free resource exists.

We recommend that you read this guide from beginning until end, because it explains a logical step by step process for implementing societal engagement in your company:

• WHY is to gain a deeper understanding of the benefits of working towards responsible tech innovation.
• WHAT is to understand what societal engagement is about and why it is useful for you.
• HOW is to help you decide how to organise the facilitation to engage with citizens.
• WHICH is to explore the appropriate approach and methods to achieve your goal.
• WHO is to be able to recruit participants with a good strategy.
• WHEN is to know the timescale for planning the societal engagement.
• WHERE is to get ideas on how to choose the location and space for the event.

Establishing continuous societal engagement around tech innovation requires critical reflection on underlying values and assumptions within your company. This is why we are offering questions for reflection throughout this guide. We also provide activities to consider how the information applies to you and your company, so that at the end it will be easier to define a plan of action as part of the Implementation.

After going through this guide, we hope that you will be able to get started with societal engagement and be part of our Mission to connect the tech industry with the people for whom technology is developed, so that we can ascertain a higher ethical standard and responsibility within tech innovation.

The examples and insights provided in this guide are from societal engagement test cases undertaken by our project partners within the following fields:

• E-Health applications and wearable electronics (project partners in Denmark, Bulgaria and Serbia) are fundamental to increasing healthcare quality and will also be a driver for innovation and renewed infrastructures, while an
  improved healthcare system, tailored to individual needs, will help reduce inequalities in medical assistance.
• The use of artificial intelligence in industrial automation systems and the changing nature of work (project partner in Spain) will have a huge impact on industries, but also on type and quality of work, and will require new competences that should be cultivated in all education cycles.
• Circular economy (project partners in Italy and Estonia) will be crucial for industrial development, in particular in the buildings and constructions sector. Cities will have to rethink urban planning, building design, renovation, and
  restoration interventions and social housing as well, while industry will have to change business approach and strengthen synergies along all value chains.

This guide can be relevant and interesting for people in the tech industry for the following reasons:

• Enhancing Reputation and Trust: By engaging with society and understanding their needs and concerns, tech companies can build trust with their customers and stakeholders. This can enhance the reputation of the company and improve customer loyalty.
• Creating Social Impact: Through societal engagement, tech companies can identify social problems and create solutions that can positively impact society. This can help tech professionals to create meaningful and purposeful
  work, contributing to a greater sense of satisfaction in their careers.
• Staying Ahead of Regulations: The tech industry is often subjected to government regulations and policies. By engaging with society, tech companies can stay ahead of these regulations, contributing to a smoother regulatory
  process and potentially avoiding negative impacts on their business.
• Creating new Business Opportunities: Responsible tech innovation can also create new business opportunities, particularly in areas such as sustainability, social impact, and ethical innovation. By engaging with society and
  addressing societal concerns, tech companies can tap into new markets and create new revenue streams.

This guide is primarily intended for small, medium and large companies in the innovative tech industry, which have the necessary resources to undertake societal engagement. We also hope to inspire startups and individual entrepreneurs with this guide, but we are aware of the limited resources and therefore the suggestions in this guide might need simplifying or adapting. As many recommendations are resource demanding, we expect differences in how companies of different sizes can implement them in practice. Furthermore, we hope that the wider tech innovation network such as research and tech centres, industrial clusters and tech associations, might benefit from the recommendations in this guide. At the end of this guide, we provide an easy way to share the guide with your tech network, to let tech actors know that this free resource exists.

We recommend that you read this guide from beginning until end, because it explains a logical step by step process for implementing societal engagement in your company:

• WHY is to gain a deeper understanding of the benefits of working towards responsible tech innovation.
• WHAT is to understand what societal engagement is about and why it is useful for you.
• HOW is to help you decide how to organise the facilitation to engage with citizens.
• WHICH is to explore the appropriate approach and methods to achieve your goal.
• WHO is to be able to recruit participants with a good strategy.
• WHEN is to know the timescale for planning the societal engagement.
• WHERE is to get ideas on how to choose the location and space for the event.

Establishing continuous societal engagement around tech innovation requires critical reflection on underlying values and assumptions within your company. This is why we are offering questions for reflection throughout this guide. We also provide activities to consider how the information applies to you and your company, so that at the end it will be easier to define a plan of action as part of the Implementation.

After going through this guide, we hope that you will be able to get started with societal engagement and be part of our Mission to connect the tech industry with the people for whom technology is developed, so that we can ascertain a higher ethical standard and responsibility within tech innovation.

The examples and insights provided in this guide are from societal engagement test cases undertaken by our project partners within the following fields:

• E-Health applications and wearable electronics (project partners in Denmark, Bulgaria and Serbia) are fundamental to increasing healthcare quality and will also be a driver for innovation and renewed infrastructures, while an
  improved healthcare system, tailored to individual needs, will help reduce inequalities in medical assistance.
• The use of artificial intelligence in industrial automation systems and the changing nature of work (project partner in Spain) will have a huge impact on industries, but also on type and quality of work, and will require new competences that should be cultivated in all education cycles.
• Circular economy (project partners in Italy and Estonia) will be crucial for industrial development, in particular in the buildings and constructions sector. Cities will have to rethink urban planning, building design, renovation, and
  restoration interventions and social housing as well, while industry will have to change business approach and strengthen synergies along all value chains.