Ethics Canvas

What if you took the traditional Business Model Canvas, which streamlines innovation into an approachable format, but applied it to ethics? ADAPT’s Prof Dave Lewis and his team have done just that to come up with the Ethics Canvas which can be openly accessed at www.ethicscanvas.org

ADAPT developed the Ethics Canvas has been developed to encourage educators, entrepreneurs, engineers, and designers to engage with ethics in their research and innovation projects. It has developed a structured approach for brainstorming supported by an online collaborative tool

ADAPT’s Ethics Canvas provides multi-disciplinary teams with a robust process to ensure that ethical considerations are captured at the beginning of the innovation process.  It goes a step further and helps businesses understand and analyse who is affected by new forms of innovation, as often technology impacts a wider stakeholder base than just the immediate users. Speaking about the Canvas, Prof Lewis said, “When designing ethically, we need to ensure we don’t get carried away with our enthusiasm and stop to consider all of the other people that are being affected. From the technical point of view, it’s like teaching the fundamentals of good manners.”

Learn more about how the Ethics Canvas is put into practice from Prof Lewis himself on YouTube.