and to focus on the idea of interactions rather than constituent parts. Foresight techniques need to enable practitioners to develop a vision of a system's emergent properties the self-organised behaviour that could result from interactions between the parts. 2. All systems have component agents (taxies,
impossible or ludicrous now. 3. Improving foresight application reframing One way to think of all of these ideas together is as different ways of seeing,
Whatever we say about the future has an implicit idea of change underlying any inference
specifically policy makers must focus on the idea of interactions rather than a system's constituent parts
There are different ways of understanding the idea and what it may mean for policy making. For example, emergence is a process of change
Axelrod and Cohen (2001) VOL. 14 NO. 4 2012 jforesight jpage 299 describe the idea of harnessing complexity to deliberately change the structure of the system,
There are at least three key ideas, Battram (2000) and Swanson and Bhadwal (2009), which can help policy makers to promote variation:
Be self-sufficient D Technology is the key Leading idea Eco-efficiency, diminishing energy consumption Restraining urban sprawl
the basic idea of scenarios as describing alternative possibilities, not predicted certainties, is lost. The best way to avoid this trap would be to repeat the scenario process regularly to refine the results.
While, in line with the idea of backcasting method, all the scenarios are against current trends, they are still quite predictable (energy efficiency,
Nevertheless, the leading idea is to anticipate on societal aspects in an early stage of technological development to get better societal embedded technology 34.
Foresight forges new social networks for the exchange of ideas experiences and specific knowledge. Territorial foresight offers noteworthy tangible benefits.
this approach has allowed us to mature ideas and contrast instruments with parsimony in a little-explored field of knowledge. 6. Main findings
2006), the objective of these think pieces was to collect, within a legal context, a range of varied ideas about the future.
The idea was not to describe what the world will look like, and then derive a series of legal recommendations to the policy makers,
The idea is to have‘‘something like a‘flight simulator '(or‘policy wind tunnel')to explore techno-socioeconomic-environmental systems,
and to provide a range of different ideas based on which scenarios can afterwards be designed and presented.
I propose the idea of attaching modelling systems and simulation platforms to parliamentary activities of lawmaking processes as another example of a FTA technique applied to Law.
Following the ideas presented in the legislative-making section, laws should ideally establish their vision of desired future,
The attachment of a specifc law to a given idea of Future renders the former (at least to some extent) dependent on the vicissitudes
and manipulations that may affect the production of such idea or vision of future. In other words, we may run the risk of having a specific vision of the future directly produced
‘‘The idea of future is more fecund than future itself''22. Notes 1. The term‘‘Law'',written in capital letters,
PAGE 348 jforesight jvol. 14 NO. 4 2012 9. Given the rich insights, ideas and visions contained in the collected contributions,
they all have their own ideas and assumptions, interpretations and examples, scientific approaches and experiences in the back of their head.
Its central goal is to obtain a well-structured connection between R&d activities in this field and potential fields of application and ideas for products.
it is expected that this process allows more reliable judgements about product ideas and visionary applications thought up by proponents (and sometimes propagandists) of nanotechnology, about the realism and the realisation periods of these concepts as well as about the potential of competing conventional technologies.
However, some of the ideas for products or visions for applications raise also considerable questions with respect to their nontechnical implications.
either form existing products or to new ideas for application. This will be complemented by a more conventional,
and thus requires a new approach making use of integral ideas. Boden, Johnston, and Scapolo (2012) give some responses to these new demands on FTA.
Tuomi looks at epistemic and ontological causes for this failure, by introducing the idea of‘ontological unpredictability
The paper introduces the idea of‘ontological unpredictability 'and shows how innovation leads to unpredictability that cannot be removed by more accurate data or incremental improvements in existing predictive models.
The following section then further elaborates the idea of ontological unpredictability in the context of innovation theory,
and use some ideas from cultural historical theory to argue that modelling the directionality of the innovative élan requires analysis of progress at several time scales.
For example, the idea that radical innovations emerge as‘hopeful monstrosities'that only gradually realise their true promise (Tushman and Anderson 1986;
Innovative ideas abound, parallel innovation is unintended frequent uses become drivers of development, and socially and economically important innovations are invented often several times before they eventually start to have real impact.
The idea of an eye presupposes vision. Yet, the evolution has produced a large variety of similar structures for eyes again and again, directing development towards practically useful directions (Mead 1907.
Invention and the evolution of ideas. London: Social science Paperbacks. Schön, D. A. 1983. The reflective practitioner.
These ideas, and more broadly artefacts, can blend together across the entire STEEPV (Social, Technological, Economic, Ecology,
However, the analogy cannot be taken too far as the future eventually yields some of its secrets as ideas emerge across its fuzzy boundary.
or her thinking with unusual ideas stemming from over the horizon scanning relating to the various forms of ignorance is important.
Managerially, this does not prevent a scenario from performing its two primary roles of integrating ideas in a way aimed to shift entrenched managerial behaviour.
‘Computers and you'is no longer the mildly bizarre idea that it was in 1977 or earlier,
Data mining is far from a new idea, the possibilities of which far exceed those of the 1960s or 1970s.
Throughout publications about or adjacent to the nano-artefact, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science quartet (NBIC), there is a continual introduction of ideas,
which are predicated on ideas of progress. Innovation studies have shown and discussed how expectations are part and parcel of all professional practices
The basic idea is that decision-making in firms and policy-settings will benefit from explorations of the future (Gordon,
along with new ideas, and transmitting them to policy-makers Facilitating policy implementation Enhancing the capacity for change within a given policy field by building a common awareness of current and future challenges,
since decisions and activities are framed by intentions and ideas about a future situation. People act not only in reaction to the past (socialisattion or present (roles in a social structure),
The idea is that a choice of the right Leitbilder will lead to a successful coordination of efforts (Grin and Grunwald 2000;
The starting idea that hydrogen is a sustainable and green solution to the mobility problem in London remained uncontested until stations for hydrogen were to be implemented.
Visions may become self-fulfiling generating ideas on alternatives. Könnölä, Brummer, and Salo (2007,610), for instance, argue that‘..
because the results resonate with current ideas and assumptions. However the embedment in a sea of expectations also adds a dual vulnerability.
Insights from the fostering of innovation ideas. Technological forecasting and Social Change 74, no. 5: 608 26.
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 786 R. Vecchiato Prominent scholars supported the idea that the best way to handle an uncertain future is to ignore it
and one of the most relevant ideas that fitted the scenarios was for a small, trendy two-seater car.
and if an innovative idea does not‘fit'with an existing business group, it is allocated to the‘Siemens Technology Accelerator'(part of the Corporate Technology Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 791 division),
which cooperate in the experimentation and development of innovative ideas, newproduct concepts, and prototypes. A model for uncertainty and strategic foresight In the prior sections, we sketched the strategic foresight approaches that emerged from our data through
and builds revolutionary ideas of what is possible (Shelton 1997). The expression‘meta-learning'was created by Losada (1999)
new ideas emerge and existing and new knowledge are combined Monitor the business FTA PROCESSES lead to an enhanced responsiveness of the network,
heavily dependent on the flow of ideas, data and information into a business and its network decision-making in its place in society.
and intution-Formal and powerful processes-Sustainability-driven firm-Positive emotions (ratio at or above 2. 90) lead to creativity across the sustainability net, focus on innovative ideas-Participative process;
individual abilities-Policies support practicces aim to reduce impacts with better use of materials and natural resources-Structured processes/activities-Firm-wide understandiin of activities, roles and responsibilities-Idea
and ownership for achievements is critical to enable everybody to change their individual ideas and build a common set of values Technology An effective integration of social and environmental strategies can be supported strongly by theuse of IT.
First, staff members submit short ideas answering written calls (i e.,, requests for proposals. Then, internal teams of experts in the technologies comprising each IA review the short ideas
and select some fraction of them for full proposals. The expert teams then review the proposals
and content that provide fodder for new ideas. It is worth noting that the visualizations themselves do not generate new ideas.
Rather it is the analyst or IA lead interacting with the visualizations that formulates questions
and new ideas based on the information and patterns seen there. Fig. 6 shows the overall scatterplot comprising investment in LDRD by all of the U s. DOE's laboratories.
or ideas outside the technology clusters within the map. We note that a more global map
and discusses the idea of anticipatory culture and its relations to systemic transformation capacities. Section 3 presents the notion of process-based roadmapping that is based on the identification of knowledge space and roadmap scope.
The idea of an anticipatory culture builds on this temporal tension (Figure 1). Therefore, the adoption of an anticipatory culture does not mean that historical development paths are erased,
The idea springs from the perspective that organisations are complex systems where transformations arise through emergence,
It is based on an idea that roadmaps are like visual narratives describiin the most critical paths of future developments (Phaal and Muller 2009.
This idea of a roadmap as a crystallised strategy chart separates roadmapping from other‘generic'foresight methods, such as Delphi or scenario processes.
This idea links strategy roadmapping to organisation and strategy studies, especially to strategy crafting (see e g.
These ideas and concepts are elaborated below. Knowledge spaces and roadmap scopes How is it possible to combine the roadmapping methodology with the creation of structural openness, an anticipatory agency,
the key ideas accentuated the need to build a new kind of serviceorieente operation culture in a field that is considered quite conservative by the actors.
Visionary ideas about technology-enabled services could also be one way to stimulate Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:05 03 december 2014 Systemic transformation, anticipatory culture,
and (4) internationality Forming visionary ideas about the systemic and technology-enabled services in the field Constructing a horizontal anticipatory agency,
the actual roadmapping process was able to endorse new ideas about markets, services, and solutions in the topic areas.
One hindrance to converting the ideas into practices could be the somewhat abstract nature of the case examples:
Therefore, a kind of interpretative phase after the visionary phase could be useful in putting the ideas into practice.
it is desirable to elicit ideas from the experts on‘issues'.'That is, what important hurdles must be surmounted along the various innovation pathways?
The idea is that this helps focus monitoring efforts to seek out advances that could facilitate our desired application.
In this situation, the idea of placing special focus on particular fields has to be phased out, while the following themes will be central in discussions in the days to come:
VOL. 15 NO. 1 2013 jforesight jpage 17 Loveridge, D. 1999),‘Foresight and Delphi processes as information sources for scenario planning'',Ideas In progress Paper No. 11, Policy
At the same time, diverging interests, opinions and agendas pose challenges to the new and still crystallizing ideas contained in foresight results.
Firstly, strategic dialogues have helped to overcome the necessarily limited perspective of individual units within an organization such as a federal ministry by connecting units with each other in a loose network where ideas can VOL. 15 NO. 1 2013 jforesight jpage 21
After a brief explanation of these issues, the paper outlines the main ideas of the papers published in this special issue.
The second part highlights the main ideas of the eight papers published in this special issue. These present some advances needed in practice to assist FTA practitioners
observations and new ideas to be prepared better for the future (assuming that it can be predicted) or shape the future (assuming that it is predetermined not fully by the identified/identifiable trends).
i) capture of indications for extrasysttemi change at a micro level instead of extrapolating seemingly dominant macro-trends, ii) mobilisation of tacit knowledge as well as support a creative spirit and an easy exchange of ideas among diverse stakeholders through
This is expected to generate dynamic cross-methodological learning processes as at each phase or iteration of the exercise ideas flow between different domains of knowledge.
The idea that one can forecast or predict the future seems to be contradicting the idea of developing multiple futures
and shaping the future by identifying common directions to follow, using foresight. In reality, predicting certain elements of a broader system such as demographic developments is not in contradiction in any way with developing multiple futures.
In so doing, due importance should be given to developing the right communication skills for sharing ideas
tales from the frontier (new methods for TFA) and importing ideas (methods and tools adopted from other fields), respectively.
and talking about abstract ideas and entities that are not directly observable, in terms of concepts grounded in very basic physical and social perceptions.
and then difficult to be commented on without some overlapping of ideas: Biology, or perhaps more generally, biosciences, is not merely a good source of metaphors,
following then trustworthy Darwin's original idea. By the same epoch, and not necessarily motivated by evolutionary concepts,
or not accepting the idea of an intelligent designer). 4. My proposal of definition is then simply 4. 1. Innovation is the emergence of a new adaptive design This definition has sufficiently broad meaning
we have some crucial troubles when talking about fundamental ideas behind them. Some of these fundamentals are:
Or the interface of artifacts and ideas in technological practices? 2 How does heritability occur in technological systems?
With this short collection of ideas I wish to suggest that a firmly conceptually based danthropology of techniquet is still lacking in the current attempts of model building and formal theorizing of an ETTC.
demotion and rise of evolutionary concepts in economics It is well known the fact that the social sciences after experiencing an initial thrust from evolutionary concepts at the turn of 19th to 20th centuries have insisted historically in ignoring Darwinian ideas.
But during the last two decades we have seen a growing interest in evolutionary ideas among economists.
New professional associations focusing on these ideas have been founded and for more than fifteen years there has been the djournal for Evolutionary Economicst (Springer),
which otherwise open the way to the revival of Joseph Schumpeter's ideas of a evolutionary global economy driven by the clustering of basic innovations
However, the basic ideas underlying evolutionary economics are still a matter of considerable controversy. Among the main objections we can find for instance:
's epistemology) and conducting to some conceptual breakthroughs like Richard Dawkins'24 memes in the 1970s and more recently Daniel Dennet's 25 Darwin's Dangerous Idea (the idea that all the fruits of evolution,
Campbell forcefully reintroduced Darwinian ideas to social sciences (economics as well), after a lapse of almost a half century after the initial thrust commented on in point 1. Basically he suggested that Darwinism contained a general theory of the evolution of all complex systems,
The initial ideas for this paradigm were developed almost a century ago. Dewey 25 put forth an argument proposing that policies be treated as experiments,
A central idea in this approach is to use the availablemodels differently, instead of using them in a predictive manner
diverging beliefs and ideas about system functioning, and complex interactions between supply, demand, substitution, and recycling, necessitating a more exploratory approach.
however there is lack of exploitation of novel ideas and sustainable solutions to address these grand challenges.
futures thinking and scenarios 3. 1. Innovation systems Innovation involves the application of new ideas or the reapplication of old ideas in new ways to develop better solutions to our needs 31.
Innovation is invariably a cumulative, collaborative activity in which ideas are shared, tested, refined, developed and applied 32.
The concept of national innovation systems is rooted in evolutionary economic theorizing on socio-technical change 33 35.
they also involve the interaction of the stakeholders, their ideas, values and capacities for social change.
and to stimulate novel ideas. Based on this observation (sub-section 4. 1), two groups of practice can be distinguished:
especially by decision-makers Conventional Convention Agree on common accepted probabilities of change (rejecting extreme ideas) Strong on acceptance and alignment,
The Coming Era of Nanotechnology 17, Drexler developed far reaching new ideas of the possibilities and risks of technologies on the nanoscale.
and his ideas became a disputed reference point in the debate around nanotechnology in the late 1980s and the 1990s.
Historical analysis indicates that the process of drawing the boundary so as to exclude Drexler's ideas was connected closely with controversies around the question,
and in spreading the idea that nanotechnology would become one of the key enabling technologies of the 21st century.
Visual inspiration, tomobilise tacit knowledge, support a creative spirit and an easy exchange of ideas among people with different disciplinary backgrounds.
and ideas across stakeholder groups is suitable for meeting the objectives of the foresight exercise. For a growing number of cases, however
if it became possible to scan the internet for ideas and to filter those ideas according to current customer needs automatically?
Sophisticated filters would automatically extract ideas with outstanding market potential. Changes in the behaviour or the use of a product would be detected without delay
and the most appropriate ideas for product optimatisation would be available immediately. The innovation would then be triggered by changes in the behaviour of people
and there would be no time lag, thanks to real time investigation. Fig. 2. Amplification example: web-extracted innovation. 456 E. Schirrmeister, P. Warnke/Technological forecasting & Social Change 80 (2013) 453 466 Fig. 3. Screenshot from the INFU web-based
The sketchy style of the drawings underlines that the story-scripts express only a very rough idea of what a situation in the future could look like.
This image seemed to foster the idea of time consuming and slow participative processes. This interpretation did not correspondwith the intention of the project team and the comprehensive description of the vision.
These so-called nodes of change in innovation 24 were subjected then to in depth discussionwithin the INFU mini panels (Table 1). The co-ordinators were identified in the course of the interviews as people with particularly relevant ideas and high
Driven innovation economic model Novel Classic Innovator'sworking conditions Temporary Stable Idea generation mode Controlled Random The size of the bubble represents how many of the selected signals conform to a specification.
In addition, individual persons are motivated to contribute to innovation activities (such as crowdsourcing initiatives or idea competitions) for their pleasure.
or fully automatised (e g. by using web crawlers to identify ideas). New forms of interplay between human creativity and automatised combinations of elements are emerging.
but also supported a very straightforward exchange of ideas among many participants and facilitated a creative interaction of people with different perspectives.
Throughout the project it was recognised that people are attracted by provocative ideas and visions. They serve very well to mobilise debates
Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge the stimulating ideas of the FTA participants, including the authors of the papers in this special edition but going well beyond and into the discussions, formal and informal,
and tolerance for deviant ideas. The first implication of the uncertainty avoidance dimension on foresight relates to a society's view on planning in general.
The third implication of the uncertainty avoidance dimension on foresight relates to tolerance for deviant ideas.
and behaviour and are intolerant of deviant persons and ideas. Hofstede notes that in countries with strong uncertainty avoidance
Hofstede also that in countries with weak uncertainty avoidance new ideas might just be ignored and not necessarily accept.
The tolerance for deviant ideas also has implications for the selection of methods that include stakeholders in a foresight process.
Furthermore, new and deviating ideas from actors who had conflicting interests were introduced during the process,
and some of these new ideas were included in the final catalogue. Considering Danish society's low uncertainty avoidance, the initiation and implementation of a long-term planning project such as the Globalisation Strategy might be contradictory.
and workshops, provides an obvious opportunity to create a synergy effect due to the creative processes that are shaped by bringing together experiences and ideas from many different interest domains.
Identification of themes Expert group analysed the material from phase 1 Workshop with user panel about the 42 themes Expert group revised the 42 themes 42 themes for strategic research Ideas and input for the remainder
The national policy foresight'study showed that studies of the future can be a source of inspiration for the development of new policy ideas, for agenda setting (i e.,
stimulating interdepartmental dialogue gathering support for ideas and policies developing a common cognitive frame of reference (a common ground of understanding)( see also 5, 11) Finally,
(2) inspiring civil servants to come up with new ideas for policy and strategy,(3) setting the agenda.
Also, in the‘organizational foresight'study, the various foresight studies of the future carried out by the government departments are designed to form initial ideas and opinions about organisational change.
These skills are related to communicating the idea results and added value of the foresight method for strategic policy-making,
and a‘glocal'impact orientation. 2. 1. Understanding interconnected innovation systems Before starting any foresight venture is important to have a clear idea of the system being analysed
because it focuses diverse inputs by soliciting signals that convey ideas about future innovations aligned with the systemic and action-oriented nature of innovation processes,
The basic idea is to add a process cycle to complement foresight with a phase of‘strategic counselling'.
Also, the idea was to involve the European commission (client) to debate all milestone results to ensure ownership and commitment,
and a variety of ideas about future innovations linked to one or more KATS and to social,
and other changes that could influence the realisation of the proposed idea. The results from the above initiatives were complemented with the outcomes from two brainstorming workshops and 106 interviews with industry representatives.
The latter also asked for innovation ideas for IMS and required changes to have realised these. All these activities produced a total of 754 research issues to be explored further
workshops) Use of common foresight with emphasis on expected impacts Literature review Online survey for the collection of ideas Scenarios and joint vision Multiple scenarios for synthesising drivers inputs in various forms
The idea of embedding such modularity was adapted from another international exercise 29 where stakeholder participation was also based on the definition of explicit roles and responsibilities for the different phases of the process.
and convince partners of the benefits of elaborating the survey questions in a way that would enable it to capture future innovation ideas and the ways in
Only after a debate on the nature of innovation and on how to solicit creative future ideas did partners achieve a common understanding and,
This approach was key to designing a questionnaire able to elicit the innovative ideas that participants thought critical for IMS both globally and locally.
insights from the fostering of innovation ideas, Technological forecasting and Social Change 74 (2007) 608 626.16 L a. Costanzo, Strategic foresight in a high-speed environment, Futures 36 (2004
Study 1 aimed to identify users'specific (future) needs and possible Lead User ideas concerning digital TV (DTV) in Flanders through an online survey (N=11.802 digital TV users.
13 unique ideas representing important unfulfilled needs were identified and evaluated. Study 2, which focused on‘Future TV experiences,
and stakeholders to voice and further develop their ideas, expectations, concerns. Through a better introduction of the future based on Foresight theory and practice and through an integration of methods and approaches from other fields, including user/market research
imagination and creation of (future) TV experiences are presented in Section 3. Study 1 focused on the identification of unfulfilled needs and possible Lead User ideas related to interactive digital TV;
For instance, active and continuous user involvement have been said to lead to‘unique and valuable ideas for future development'15, to more‘socially and environmentally friendly technologies',to an increased‘quality of innovations'16
In the opportunity identification and idea generation phases, issues such as the‘functional fixation'of users to their current reality and the difficulty for users to break loose from their own use context are mentioned 19
Both studies have sought to engage current users at an early stage in the exploration and identification of possible future development ideas
namely the identification of unfulfilled needs and possible Lead User ideas related to the (future) use of DTV. 3. 1. 1. Methodological approach An online survey was set up
%For the identification of these future user needs, we adopted an approach based on the first steps of Lead User-market research 23,25 and inspired by the idea of‘crowdsourcing'26.
In the strict sense, crowdsourcing implies an open call for ideas and contributions. In this study however, a large crowd of users within a delineated subpopulation of Flemish DTV-users was addressed.
The ideas and needs that came out of the open questions were coded into different categories. The main category grouped rather common needs/complaints (i e.,
and differed from these more general needs were coded in a separate category as possible Lead User-ideas.
In a next research phase, these potential Lead User-ideas were evaluated by a group of 15 Flemish experts in the field of digital TV (consisting of content managers and innovation managers from Flemish broadcasters
Their role was to evaluate the ideas in terms of market potential(‘now'and‘in five years),
'degree of newness/innovativeness and degree to which some players in the digital TV business were already working on the idea at hand.
The ideas were ranked then on the basis of these evaluations and estimations. 3. 1. 2. Results In total,
After clustering, this resulted in 13 unique ideas:(1) 3d images,(2) community-functions through DTV,(3) DTV as an embedded open source platform where everyone can develop applications,
12 out of the 13 Lead User-ideas came from users that showed both Lead User-characteristics:
'As already mentioned, the‘Lead Userness'of the identified ideas was validated by an expert panel.
The results are given in Table 1. The column‘market potential now'shows the mean estimated potential for the Lead User-idea at the moment the K. De Moor et al./
The ideas are ranked based on the percentages from this question.‘‘In development'shows the number of experts (N=15) that believe this idea is already in development somewhere,
and the last column‘implemented 5y'indicates the number of respondents that thinks this idea will be implemented effectively in five years'time.
The‘virtual digicorder'-idea is regarded clearly as the idea with the most potential, but also considered as being in an already advanced stage of development.
This idea was mentioned also by the largest number of respondents. A visual EPG that synchronises with other devices, ratings and recommendations of content and community-features is considered also a Lead User-idea with an estimated future potential of 1/3
or more of the digital TV-viewers and is also at a more advanced stage of development.
Automated subtitling and the exchange of (recorded) content amongst users is considered also as having large potential,
The open source, gaming, video surveillance and smart home-ideas are considered also as having less market potential,
The open source, surveillance and smart home ideas can be considered as the most innovative ideas as for these ideas only a few experts believe that they are currently being developed.
Although the presented combination of a large-scale survey with an expert evaluation as such is not new,
the gathered ideas serve as bottom-up input for further exploration of future innovation opportunities for DTV in a natural research setting (through the Living Lab approach).
Idea Market potential now(%)Market potential+5y(%)In development Implemented 5y Virtual digicorder 23.7 48.2 13 13 Visual EPG 13.1 37.7 10
/Futures 59 (2014) 39 49 44 thoughts, comments and ideas (see Fig. 1 on the right.
This idea of shared TV was evaluated not as very innovative, yet it was very important for the users.
In Study 1, a combined approach of Lead Users with the idea of crowdsourcing was used.
Tapping users'imaginative potential may not necessarily lead to breakthrough innovative ideas, yet it offers a way to open up the innovation process,
it is likely that some methods will be more successful than others in supporting a user to voice his or her future ideas, visions, expectations.
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