Emerging biotechnologies from fields such as synthetic biology and industrial biotechnology raise challenges for governance. In response, public funders have developed new approaches to govern these technologies before decisions are locked in and products emerge onto the market. Over a decade of experience with these nascent forms of governance, such as Responsible Re- search and Innovation (RRI), shows their value but also the limitations, particularly when im- plemented without consideration of day-to-day working conditions, sector specific distinctions and institutional structures shaping research in the biological sciences. Drawing on three workshops with members of the ERA CoBioTech funding programme, we show how a new approach, grounded in the idea of human capabilities, can help to integrate the skills, knowledge and institutional conditions needed to enact upstream governance in the design of future funding programmes. We identify the goals researchers associated with RRI in the life sciences, outline five sets of capabilities that enable researchers, managers and adminis- trators to practise responsible research and innovation, and unearth a corresponding set of re- sources that these capabilities depend upon. Funders that learn to design programmes to max- imise and expand the five capability sets are likely to enable more substantive forms of upstream governance than before.