and assessed for different time horizons. The reasons for success in terms of shortteer policy impacts will be highlighted
the late 1970s saw the emergence of a new paradigm in research, technology and then also innovation policies,
and third on the time lag, at which an impact occurs3 (Table 1). This framework will be taken as the background against
This was regarded as a break with the past Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 957 Table 1. A Framework to classify the impacts of foresight activities.
Function Time lag Targeted and/or unintended impact Informing Immediate Increased recognition of a topic area Awareness of science,
i e. before the start of the actual strategy process. In this phase four scenarios were developed, which served as a backdrop for later elaborating elements of an RTI policy strategy for the city of Vienna.
the main phase of the project‘Wien denkt Zukunft'started in November 2006 with a major kickoff event attended by over 500 participants.
but also by the three public events that were organised at the beginning, at mid-term and at the end of the process in order to gather further input from a broad range of stakeholders.
The process started with a kickoff event(‘opening session')in the City hall with prominent proponents from politics,
fields of action and kickoff projects of the official RTI-strategy. As a consequence, the modes of operation of the panels were quite diverse
Exactly one year after the kickoff event the RTI-strategy of the City of Vienna was presented to an equally large audience of several hundred participants, backed by the mayor, city councillors and key stakeholders.
Figure 2. Main fields of action and associated kickoff projects. focus on gender issues and parts of the population that have been neglected in the past (e g. university graduates with a migration background).(
Six of these projects have been prioritised(‘kickoff projects) 'and are likely to be implemented in the first 2 3 years after the end of the strategy process (see Figure 2). For the year 2008 the initial three projects have been endowed with approximately¤14 million:(
Other kickoff projects as well as further initiatives are planned to be launched from 2009 onwards. In fact, in response to the economic crisis in early 2009, the City of Vienna decided to spend an additional¤60 million on research infrastructures and cutting-edge research as part of a broader economic and employment stimulus package.
Two of the remaining three kickoff projects (promottio of junior groups and top locations for cutting-edge research) will be financed from this additional source of funding.
Next to some other research-related initiatives, further funding will also be made available for the sixth suggested kickoff project,
implicit agendas and objectives had to be made more explicit to provide the basis for the joint definition of future challenges, fields of action and kickoff projects;
Although the foresight process was targeting the time horizon 2015 (and in some instances even beyond),
and the restrictions on the time horizon implied Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 966 K. M. Weber et al. that some longer-term issues tended to be excluded
For the first time, a communication process was implemented that brought research and innovation policy to the forefront of policy attention and that brought together representatives from most relevant policy areas.
and thus policy-relevant, time horizon implied that severra important longer-term issues, likely to be of a controversial nature,
In fact, it was a lucky coincidence that the foresight process‘Wien denkt Zukunft'could draw on a comprehensive analytical basis provided by the research programme‘Systems Research in the Urban area
The present case of a Norwegian municipal vision project points to the often implicitly assumed shared understanding of who young people are
such as understanding past and present, and exploring the future in different scenarios (Godet 2001). In the literature on municipal planning, visioning is regarded as a separate method,
In the context of future orientation, reflexivity has evolved from an understanndin of human practice as described by Garfinkel (1967) via a social theory of modernity introduced by among others Giddens (1991) and Beck, Bonss,
Giddens (1991,29) argues that the‘popularity of futurology in the system of high modernity is not an eccentric preoccupation...
their ability to address present and future issues and to act responsibly in a changing environment. Less attention,
Giddens (1991,29) argues that our present knowledge about social institutions and relations between social actors relates to existing structures
The empirical study is based on 34 hours of in depth interviews and fieldwork observations in those various settings.
and to collect‘relevant ethnographic moments'(Van't Klooster and Van Asselt 2006) during the 7-month project period.
For the discussion at hand ethnographic moments were chosen which were‘indicative of dissonance'(Herzfeld 1997) and highlighted‘contesting values or problematic social changes of some kind'(O'connor 2004).
This article is based on the collection of specific moments in which the idea of assumed shared values collided with the ideal of community engagement. 9 The following discussion of how an image of schoolchildren as stakeholders
This means that this time the focus is on areas of action which address the well-being of the citizens
They were asked to use their estimated age of about 30 years in 2020 as a starting point for their visionary ideas. 14
when it came to their contributions their present social status was not what the project leaders were interested in.
They suspected that visions taking their starting point in the young people's present situationwould result in enumerations of their daily needs
Once we have discussed financial conditions, time and the political premises for such processes, it is difficult to imagine deeper analyses of possible visions.
and recommendations need to be based upon sound data of the past and present, as well projections of those trends that can be projected with reasonable confidence of accuracy,
Their genuine position as young people in the community was the starting point for politicians, administrative leaders and project organisers, from
no juvenile wishes and demands connected to the present, no ideas about physical projects, only ideas about social well-being and a clear dissociation from too fantastic notions.
on the assumption that images of a desired future can direct individuals'present behaviours, guide choices and influence decisions.
‘in a wide range of contexts, present day evidences, proofs, facts or truths are giving way to future-oriented abstractions premised on desire,
imagination and the will to the yet not present'.'19. According to The United nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP 2009) good governance has eight major characteristics.
It is also responsive to the present and future needs of society. 20. Local newspaper article, 5 april 2006.21.
Organising the present's futures towards an evaluation of foresight, knowledge flows and the coordination of innovation. http://www. iesam. csic. es/proyecto/formwp1. pdf (accessed September 2009).
The contours of high modernity. In Modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age, 10 35.
Stanford, CA: Stanford university Press. Godet, M. 2001. Creating futures: scenario planning as a strategic management tool. London:
they can be done in minutes. One can thereby take advantage of wide availability of rich science
The time to conduct certain technology analyses can be reduced from months to minutes by taking advantage of four factors enabling QTIP Quick Technology intelligence Processes:
These databases can be searched from one's computer, enabling retrieval of electronic records in seconds.
As a loose analogy, consider the change from the handmade automobile to the assembly line Model T Ford beginning in 1908.
In a minute or so, we can examine several alternatives, select the one (s) for presentation,
this analysis was done not in the target time of b1 dayq. Instead it derives from analytical work that has been ongoing for 2 years as illustrative material for a book 1. But,
200 binnovation indicatorsq. 2 We gratefully acknowledge support of the U s. National science Foundation for"QTIPS-24-Hour Technology intelligence & Forecasting"(DMI-0231650.
Nonetheless, the entire process can usually be completed in minutes. The complete search and retrieval process can often be completed in under an hour,
contingent on how delicate the search specification and refining processes are. Those depend on the sensitivity of the MOTISSUES being addressed.
requiring less precision than the second (is this a suitable partner?.In this case, we actually began with searches on bfuel cellsq in general.
We know of a major corporation that reduced its time to provide a key set of competitive technological intelligence (CTI) analyses from 3 months to 3 days.
We mutually recognized that certain preliminary analyses could be done in 3 minutes enabling refinement of information searches that would drastically upgrade subsequent FTA work.
Over the past decades, many management domains have come to rely quite heavily upon empirical evidence. For example, manufacturing process management used to depend completely on tacit knowledge.
A supervisor spent decades gaining familiarity with his (or occasionally her) machines, people, and processes.
Instead, the quick mindset has the user set the defining temporal parameter the deadline then we technology analysts fit into that schedule.
The Vice-president for Research at Georgia Tech asks me to benchmark this university's SOFC research against the leading American universities for a presentation this noon.
and elucidation of relationships based on text co-occurrence patterns can extend QTIP possibilities. Development of information visualizations especially for S&t offers great potential 12
in the belief that our analysis may be instructive for the planning of large-scale foresight exercises that need to serve high-level policy objectives subject to demanding time constraints and expectations.
In this paper, we describe Finnsight 2015 (henceforth Finnsight for brevity), the national foresight exercise of the Academy of Finland and the Finnish funding agency for technology and Innovation (Tekes),
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:11 03 december 2014 992 A. Salo et al. panel meetings were organised only about seven weeks later than the initial meeting of the panel chairmen. 3. 3. Analytical concepts and methodological
Specifically, about three weeks before the first panel meeting the purpose of which was to address driving forces that would set the stage for the development of focus areas each panellist was requested to propose through the internet three to five driving forces using the template.
whether the focus area was among the most importaan third, the second most important third,
the results of Finnsight were published at an opportune moment for the development of the strategic research plans for these centres.
the Finnish innovation Fund, launched a So-called future Forum already at the time when Finnsight was running.
which has been debated in the Parliament in late 2008.4. Axes of balance in Finnsight Although formal evaluation of Finnsight has been carried out,
This opportune timing gave possibilities for instrumental use, because the foresight results characterised focal competence areas that would plausibly merit explicit attention in strategy implementation.
As a result, these latter panels spent more time on demarcattin their boundaries and clarifying their objectives;
more time may be required to lay the grounds for the generation of such perspectives. In hindsight, the development of novel methodological approaches in Finnsight most notably the definition of dedicated units of analysis (driving forces, focus areas of competences) and the extensive deployment of internet-based tools for engaging the panel
In fact Slaughter made it clear in his review of a previous decade of futures studies that‘‘As we look ahead it becomes increasingly clear that technical innovation on its own is not the main issue.''
even if the field is not ready to tolerate a new collective term. 2 This leads to the second persistent theme.
This was reflected in the futures 43 (2011) 229 231 2 This tension has been mirrored at the time of writing by an attempt by parts of the European commission to put into wider usage the collective term they are using for internal managerial purposes
The experience of FTA suggests that then new term will only have currency in the space and time in
However, the central output this time was edited an book. In preparing the conference the scientific committee had concluded that a better focus could be achieved through the production by its members of‘‘anchor papers''.
and implications of FTA for policy and decision making''but this time constructed its themes and anchor papers differently.
review of a decade's futures work, Futures 21 (1989) 447 465.4 H. A. Linstone, Corporate planning, forecasting,
first in the area of genetically modified plants and then for the domain of Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies. 2. Background and rationale 2. 1. Tailoring Foresight a revision During the last two decades the field of Foresight has developed a lot through practical experience
But, undoubtedly, with the dynamics of the ERA building, a European R&i system is emerging,
and define the Foresight exercise as a project with a clear beginning and end. Hence, we exclude from our analyses Embedded foresight
(MON 810) has illustrated recently one more time. 10 Secondly, plant genomics is based a science discipline where industrial companies play a major part,
The European union had approved a number of GM crops until late 1998, but growing public concern over their supposed environmental and health risks led several EU countries to demand the moratorium.
By late 1999 there were enough such countries to block any new approvals of GM produce.
The ERA NET‘‘Nanosci-ERA''is coordinating national programmes: is a Consortium of 17 national research agencies from 12 countries in the European research area
this paper proposes a reasonably validated framework which beyond its acknowledged limitations addresses directly the difficult issue of the design of Foresight activities fit for the emerging European research area (ERA.
ERA is, in short, the integration/coordination of research and innovation policies between the EU and Member States 13 Mona:
we suggest our methodology is applicable indeed for designing such ERA Foresight activities and contribute to address the challenge we face regarding both the ERA and Foresight.
Acknowledgements This paper is based on a workshop organised by the JRC-IPTS European foresight Action at Seville, Spain, June 2008.
refining the co-evolutionary multilevel perspective, Technological forecasting and Social Change 72 (6)( 2005) 681 696.14 R. R. Nelson, S g. Winter, In search of a useful theory of innovation
(ERA), European commission, Luxembourg, 2008.19 D. Braun, Special issue on‘‘The political coordination of knowledge and innovation policies'',Science and Public policy 35 (4)( 2008.
/Futures 43 (2011) 232 242 241 43 S. Kuhlmann, ERA-Dynamics Project Strategic Report 2006 2007:
Case study on Chemistry (ERA Dynamics PRIME Project), 2009.45 P. van den Besselaar, A. Schoen, Knowledge dynamics: a network analytical approach, in:
Presentation at the PRIME Winter School on Emerging Nanotechnologies, Grenoble, 4 8 february, 2008.48 A. Bonaccorsi, G. Thoma, Institutional complementarity and inventive performance in nano science and Technology research
Uncertainties and risks have proliferated during the past decade as a result of the increasing complexity of and turbulence in the marketplaces in
because neurons have a relatively long bresetq time of 5 ms. But with an average of 1000 connections between each neuron and its neighbors,
which successful approaches and ideas from the past discourage employees from innovation. Scanning processes can provide quick, occasional doses of chaos to employees and managers.
Over time, participants learn that change rather than stability is the coin of the commercial realm
or manufacturing mechanisms is one of the latest arrivals to the abstract sets. Cultural topics are of huge importance in the abstract set
In SRIC-BI's scanning system, each month's set of 100-plus abstracts serves as the starting point for a monthly open-ended discussion
but political or philosophical arguments simply waste the group's time. Lively exchanges of opinion are not uncommon.
and bspeculativeq simply as a means of providing a perspective on a time frame for projected impacts.
Strategy & Business 34 (2003 Spring) 71.2 Stephen Haeckel, Adaptive Enterprise: Creating and Leading Sense
Mckinsey Quarterly 2 (2002) 48 57.7 Mark Buchanan, Power laws and the new science of complexity management, Strategy & Business 34 (2003 Spring) 76.
Daheim and Uerz 7 at the Second FTA Conference in Seville conference noted the emergence of open foresight as a trend,
the resources in question being those of finance, time, infrastructure etc. In science and technology policy an OECD report identified three types of priorities 8:
and that the programme moved sharply towards its second, networking, objective, which saw priorities (in the sense of funded areas) emerge as bottom up projects at a much more focussed level.
a decade earlier an attempt to construct matrices of such interdependence had collapsed under its own weight the idea was pursued not further.
Priorities and‘‘posteriorities'':''A well-known phenomenon is the extreme reluctance of panels to identify negative priorities
or‘‘posteriorities''from which resources may be transferred to positive priorities. The same is true to some extent for programmes
. 3 There is a certain irony that after 2 decades energy has returned as a key priority
In some parts of Eastern europe priorities are an instrument to move towards a contemporary portfolio and away from the materials science/defence orientation of the Soviet era.
as well as the integration of accession states into the European research area (ERA)''19. Havas and Keenan have noted a tendency in such countries for science systems to be disconnected from innovation
Simpler definitions of innovation present it as‘‘the successful exploitation of new ideas''.''4 However, 4 See for example UK Innovation White paper 27.
While the direct use of foresight was documented not at the time in that example it is interesting to note that one of the most successful has evolved now into an ERA NET‘‘Wood Wisdom''dealing with the integration of forestry and wood material science and engineering.
if the lessons of the past are forgotten. On the other hand the more embedded role as an instrument of articulating
FOREN Guide Foresight for Regional development Network A Practical Guide to Regional foresight, European commission, December 2001.6 H. Chesbrough, The era of open innovation, Sloan Management Review 44 (3)( 2003.
and dedicated methods to improve the awareness and understanding of present and future challenges of the innovation system and its parts.
and have more accurate forecasts on the time-horizons of S&t developments. 2. 2. Chosen future perspectives:
Fixed management can be characterised as centralised approach in which co-ordinators fix the scope and methods of the project at the outset and control the process,
and threats and consequently to put in place preparedness mechanisms to act on time. Anticipation of intelligence (or knowledge) is a contribution to improve the knowledge base for the designing of policies.
and extensive elements are present. 3. Empirical findings on foresight projects addressing societal challenges 3. 1. Introduction Major societal challenges have been addressed by the foresight community for already several decades.
It applies trend analysis with a time-horizon of 30 years. Autonomous Expert group work.
Future Impact of ICTS on Environmental Sustainabilityh 22 Informative Explore how ICTS will influence future environmental sustainability (time horizon:
''Fixed The methodology was fixed at the beginning. The Cabinet Office established the Innovation 25 Strategy Council and the Innovation 25 Special Mission,
Fixed The methodology was fixed at the beginning. Extensive There are broad engagement of diversified stakeholders from government, academia and industry.
Fixed The methodology was fixed at the beginning. Extensive Very diversified stakeholders from government academia and industry have participated in NTFC.
Fixed The methodology was fixed at the beginning. Extensive Diversified stakeholders from government, academia and industry are very active in the process of TF2020. a Commissioned by the Nordic council. b Commissioned and conducted by VTT Technical research Centre. c Commissioned
and transmission time-space compression, post-Fordism, flexible accumulation, and the advance of finance capital, which is characterized by networking, globalization,
They are expected to improve the understanding of present 4 In 1997 the European commission published a"Green Paper"pointing at the development of a new Information society
and has completed 8 times technology foresight activities since 1970.6 FTA projects in China in broad sense can be traced to‘‘The 12 Years Science Development Planning''made in 1956,
and to assess (quantitatively) the ways in which ICTS would influence future environmental sustainability (time horizon:
The exploration of alternative forms of participation for decision-makers and other participants with serious time constrains can
In the last decade, FTA ACTIVITIES and in particular national and Regional foresight programmes have often been oriented to supporting the functioning and development of innovation systems.
when invoking conventional economic models for short-term analysis and forecasting, at least in less turbulent times.
but also differences from, the ways in which we create knowledge about the past and present.‘
Posits are based on knowledge of (or assumptions about) past and present, and analysis of posits
Most trivially theyhave a beginning, middle, and end! Several authors have suggested ways of understanding these phases in a little more depth.
but the postponement becomes indefinite.)For selection to be successful, this step results in a model of
examination of what the relationships would be between the present and the key future or futures that have been posited (and possibly some other possibilities).
creation of plans to inform decisions in the present day and near future concerning actions to shape the future.
while a large-scale FTA ACTIVITY may well encompass a sequence of steps that move around in Popper's diamond.
Despite the phenomenal complexity of the contemporary world, there are possibilities for such individuals and groups to make really significant contributions.
The second important factor is the‘‘crisis of science policy''more generally as pressures to restrict burgeoning public expenditure collided with demands from Big science
and extensive activities such as scenario workshops where a number of activities are organised into a sequence in
in order to illustrate the relevance of thekmapproach even in the context of individual/specific FTA METHODS. 6. Scenario workshops as knowledge processes Scenario workshops typically feature a sequence of activities.
A common starting point in scenario workshops is to examine‘‘drivers and shapers''factors that could be critical to influencing the course of events,
and shapers, there are liable to be moments of‘‘internalisation''as participants become more familiar with working with the background material and fitting it into their own conceptual frameworks and constellations of interests and also, perhaps,
''Major‘‘combination''moments come in the scenario construction sessions that constitute the heart of the workshop.
identifying turning points and indicators of change, developing narratives of future histories and accounts of affairs at a future point in time in a way enabling comparison across break out groups, and so on.
The use of new media at present usually means less time allocated to purely social interaction
and even enhancing time and opportunity for such encounters. There are probably lessons to be drawn from online gaming and other virtual communities in this respect.
(and time) to examine the underpinning assumptions of models (not to mention intellectual familiarity with the conceptual underpinnings of social and economic models).
In the UK, there had been major scenario work on strategies for developing a competitive edge in nanotechnology and literature/expert surveying of social issues associated with this field, in the early years of the present century.
safeguards in a world of ambient intelligence (SWAMI), Second International Seville Seminar on Future-oriented technology analysis, Seville, September 28 29,2006 (available at:
10.1016/j. futures. 2010.11.006 A short overview of the development of the present situation regarding governance sets the scene for the more detailed analysis of the relationship between governance
but this was some time after the UK's Royal Society embarked, in 1981, on a series of conferences on the assessment and perception of risk.
The history of governance is concerned mostly with how the public's perception of technological innovation has grown over time.
It has become more tenuous over time despite strenuous efforts to the contrary that include Adam smith's theses,
long-wave (Kondratieff)‘ theory,'Schumpeterian‘gales of creative destruction',Nelson and Winter's evolutionary economics and much else besides.
Globalisation and its offspring glocalisation have moved centre stage and now present three pillars corporate industrial activity,
in ways that are responsive to the present and future needs of society. Sheng 9 claims that there are eight major characteristics to good governance:
The concept means development that is able to meet the necessities of the present generation and does not compromise the rights,
sustainable development can be seen as a proposal with an ethical modernity in its horizon and not only a technical one;
or continuity in the horizon of a transforming intervention of the‘world of needs'22.1 Cf.
The concept should be understood as the possibility of building a new era of economic development, enabled with policies 22 that keep
Salzmann et al. 30 point out that these differ in terms of the hypothesized causal sequence and the direction of the relationship.
The issue of the causal sequence between financial and social environmental performance remains unresolved. Descriptive research suggests that managers focus on the economic dimension of CSR revealing two shortcomings on firms'approach CSR
Indexes such as FTSE4GOOD Index, 4 Domini 400 Social Index and Dow jones Sustainability Index played a crucial role in the commercial breakthrough that SRI has seen over the last decades due to the fact that they allow benchmarking between the performance
Nevertheless, the number of voluntary standards has risen in the last decades and put companies in difficult situations in abiding by their principles.
Doing these things requires a new approach to both CSR and philanthropy than the one prevalent nowadays.
at least, the Second International Seville Conference on Future-oriented technology analysis (September 2006. The greater acknowledgement of the co-evolution of technology and society,
It does so by indicating that the time has come for the FTA COMMUNITY to go beyond the current major focus of identifying
/Futures 43 (2011) 279 291 289 References 1 D. Large, Participation and representation, A Review of Sustainability Here and now, in part of The Great Debate:
Towards a New Modernity, Sage, London, 1992.3 F. Soddy, Cartesian Economics: The Bearing of Physical science on State Stewardship, Hendersons, 1922.4 F. Soddy, Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt, George Allen and Unwin, 1926.5 H Kahn, W. Brown
California Management Review 2 (1960) 70 76.34 B. Gates, Making Capitalism More Creative, Time Inc.,2008 July 31.
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