'which was carried out in 2009 by the Joint research Centre-Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) for the Bureau of European Policy Advisors (BEPA) of the European commission (EC).
and information and communications technologies to enable citizens'empowerment..The need for more effective and transparent governannc that allows institutions to anticipate future challennge
In addition, technologies have to be developed and/or applied to provide sufficient water and food in many parts of the world 228.
Based on their experiences from the exercise on‘Scanning for emerging science and technology issues',Amanatidou et al.
Brummer, V.,Salo, A.,Nissinen, J. and Liesio, J. 2011)‘ A methodology for the identification of prospective collaboraatio networks in international R&d programs',International Journal of Technology management, 54
Reflections from Finnsight 2015',Technology analysis and Strategic management, 21: 987 1001. Saritas, O. and Smith, J. E. 2011)‘ The big picture trends, drivers, wild cards, discontinuities and weak signals',Futures, 43: 292 312.
From global challenges to dedicated, technological, collaborative research projects Kerstin Cuhls1,,*Alexander Bunkowski2 and Lothar Behlau2 1fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation research, Breslauer Straße 48,76139 Karlsruhe,
Fraunhofer's strategic R&d planning predominantly takes place at the level of its 60 institutes and its six groups of institutes, each with similar technological scope.
and needs-oriented approaches versus a science and technology push. Grand challenges are discussed at many levels, for instance, the EU, the regions, nations,
Fraunhofer's strategic R&d planning predominantly takes place at the level of its 60 institutes and its six groups of institutes, each with a similar technological scope.
and invade patterns of civilisation, technology, economy, and value systems. Megatrends have a half-life of at least 50 years,
Blind et al. 2001) to highlight topics that should be assessed in science and technology. Megatrends are used also as a part of the evaluation in market studies and analysis (Frost and Sullivan, 2010.
technology megatrends, converging technologies,‘biologilisation',miniaturisation, intelligent environments etc. These developments were addressed directly in the Fraunhofer foresight process at that time (Klingner et al. 2008.
The new version of the German‘hightech strategy'1 (Bundesministerium fu r Bildung und Forschung 2010) has defined needs-oriented fields (Bedarfsfelder in German) and key technologies as a frame
Institutes of similar scientific and technological scope form a total of six groups representing Fraunhofer knowledge domains (information and communications technologies, life sciences, materials, light and surfaces, microelectronics, and production.
and results should be quickly implementable to create the maximum impact in the organisation in the shortest possible time. 3. 2 Former future-oriented processes at Fraunhofer (technology-driven) In 2004,
and described 50 technology trends and discussed them in a workshop with experts (see Fig. 1). A total of 12 future perspectives were identified for publication
and technologydriiven the starting point of the processes was technologies and technological approaches. Both processes were started to enhance
Papers on foresight studies or specific technological R&d trends were analysed and evaluated as the starting point. Experts with different technological backgrounds met in workshops to discuss
and assess the future relevance of certain technologies by extrapolating the current R&d portfolio to the future.
This approach is common for a technological-driven organisation like the Fraunhofer Society. It fits with an attitude often associated with technicians
engineers and scientists that can be, in a slightly exaggerated way, formulated as‘Let's drive this interesting and fascinating technology further.
Later on, we will find out what it can be used for.'.'At the end of the 2005 and 2008 FTA PROCESSES, 12 innovation topics, that became 12 Fraunhofer future topics were defined.
-and technology-driven approaches that make use of longteer thinking, but that the opposite (needs-driven) approaches are rare.
Within a competitive call, institutes teamed up to develop technological solutions to the challenges in the form of collaborative project proposals.
In this first part of the process, mainly politically driven proposed actions as well as technological approaches to solutions of the challenges were identified from the State of the Future report,
000 pages), a description of technological solution approaches and an annual adaptation of content. The 14th issue (Glenn et al. 2009) was used.
Only challenges where technological solutions were applicable (e g. How can growing energy demand be met safely and efficiently?
2) Extracting and evaluating technological solution approaches for each subchallenge (see Figs 3, 4 and 6:
the generalist team extracted the technological solution approaches mentioned in the text for each subchallenge.
Each technological solution approach was rated in terms of its fit with the Fraunhofer R&d portfolio and clustered into solution fields.
Fraunhofer future markets. 239 Figure 5. Example of assessment for subchallenges and technological approaches. Figure 6. Overview of entire process. 240.
the projects that should be funded are supposed not to be driven technology, but should bring together different disciplines
Perform dedicated technological R&d projects: the projects should be supported by technologies from Fraunhofer and need to produce results that really offer a solution for a part of the problem..
Ensure broad acceptance through a transparent process: the process is performed in an open and transparent way
eight were assessed as being applicable to technological solution approaches and were broken down into 30 subchallenges.
Within the 30 subchallenges, 233 technological approaches were extracted and synthesised into 18 solution fields with the appropriate Fraunhofer fit.
reducing the potential infection in hospitals, doctor's offices and care of the aged by new technologies for highly efficient on-site sterilisation.
and technology organisations From an R&d management programme that is organised by international institutes with a similar background to Fraunhofer,
and technology organisations in Europe have their specific approaches to Fraunhofer future markets. 241 defining their R&d portfolio.
In addition, TNO has‘enabling technologies'programmes..VTT, the Finnish research organisation, has a rather centralised research and technology development portfolio development.
Although VTT is a governmental agency and is funded partly by the government, the government itself is involved not in the portfolio planning,
The SINTEF research and technology development portfolio is defined at the level of the single institutes. This means that their focus is not on providing overall large solutions to the grand challenges.
K. Cuhls et al. technological solutions for Fraunhofer-specific challenges. For the first time, Fraunhofer used a topical framework for an internal funding programme.
For Fraunhofer, with its strong technology-and at the same time application-orientation, this is rather new. The change from proposing a technology-driven cooperative project to a problemdriive is underestimated sometimes.
Normally, a researcher applies for a project with a proposal based on technology-oriented programmes. If his/her competence fits with the working programme,
he/she acts as a nucleus and invites other researchers to build a consortium in order to broaden the scientific approach.
All of them already represent joint, interdisciplinary work beyond mere technological approaches. Therefore, the communication effect will go far beyond the mere projects.
The combination of the top-down derivation of the specific challenges with the bottom-up generation of the specific technological solutions met this requirement well.
However, more specific challenges would have helped to compare the proposed technological solutions..Impact-orientation: a goal of the competitive call was to find the most convincing collaborative solution Fraunhofer could provide for the specific challenge.
But in most cases, one single institute took the lead in the problemsollvin with a certain technological focus and a solution concept.
not single technologies, but system solutions seem to be the future framework for joint research programmes,
This is the strategy of the German government in science and technology fields, see also<http://www. bmbf. de>accessed 15 july 2011.
References Blind, K.,Cuhls, K. and Grupp, H. 2001)‘ Personal attitudes in the assessment of the future of science and technology:
New foresight on Science and Technology. Technology, Innovation and Policy, Series of the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation research, No. 13.
Heidelberg: Physica. Frost and Sullivan. 2010) World's Top Global Mega Trends to 2020 and Implications to Business, Society and Cultures.<
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