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.
and quite often non-governmental organisation and civil society stakeholders 1. FTA, especially in the form of Foresight programmes, has come to be applied in the form of a mutual learning process,
FTA's subfields include technology foresight, technology forecasting and technology assessment, and of course futures research with its emphasis on explicating long-term alternative development prospects.
We can see learning processes at work in the successive generations of several National foresight programmes. Often there have been extensive processes of reflection
and discussion when a new cycle of the foresight activity is to be launched. Wealso often see a hasty scramble
National foresight programmes share these features of technocratic rationality, democratic deliberation, bureaucratic timetables, and political expediency, combining in an unholy melee, in common with many other policy initiatives.
Thus Horton 9 depicted foresight as moving through three phases the chronological order is somewhat flexible, with scope for reiteration and overlap of these phases:
and thereby producing foresight knowledge (some of this will be posits, in Bell and Olick's terminology.
however, that many governmental foresight exercises fail to provide the necessary support for interpretation to a wide range of stakeholders,
selection and retention to three phases of foresight processes6, resulting in a structure rather similar to Horton's:
and he actually specifies technology foresight, but the argument remains the same when we replace TF with FTA.
Popper 10 relates methods to a yet wider account of the stages through which Foresight programmes typically pass.
With the rise of Foresight programmes, and‘‘fully fledged foresight''as an ideal, 8 FTA often involves much wider engagement and involvement of stakeholders,
and of sources of specialised knowledge about the issues and actions in focus, than characterised many earlier futures studies.
Coates et al. 11.8 See Miles 13 and Georghiou et al. 37 for accounts of‘‘fully fledged foresight''a concept taken up by several other authors,
Policymakers thus sought more transparency in decision-making, with foresight, technology assessment, and key technologies approaches coming to the fore, alongside other tools such as research evaluation and impact assessment.
and is also likely to increase the commitment to making use of the foresight knowledge).
One interesting phenomenon is the evolution of websites for National foresight programmes, as decisions are made about how to represent current activities
to understanding and guiding the shared knowledge creation of key actors (industry, academia and policymakers) in the context of Nordic foresight activities 21,22.
When the FTA PROCESS involves a wide range of key actors in the case of the Nordic H2 energy foresight coming from several countries there are special challenges confronted in shared knowledge creation (even in agreeing upon which of Bell's‘‘posits''to explore
In the Nordic H2 energy foresight, the appropriation of the knowledge from the foresight process into various stakeholder organisations was seen as being accomplished through such activities as pilot projects
Eerola's account of the various steps and procedures of the Nordic H2 energy foresight are located in terms of the SECI model in Fig. 2
The earlier discussion of sensemaking and foresight phases can readily be related to such a SECI approach.
The complexity of FTA PROCESSES means that they can involve application of similar techniques for different purposes, at different points in the foresight knowledge cycle.
In the Nordic foresight exercise the pilot studies and other‘‘internalisation''activities were thus happening at the same time as the FTA PROCESS proceeded to the next circles of the externalisation and combination phases.
Through most of the exercise's life, some members of stakeholder organisations were engaging with the foresight activity
and posits being developed in the foresight process, relating these to the interests and goals of their organisations.
on foresight process and results Conference papers Project website Fig. 2. Different foresight elements in a dynamic process of shared knowledge creation, a SECI perspective.
more Recent foresight programmes have addressed broader participation more directly, though as much for technocratic reasons as for more democratic ones (leading to criticisms that this sort of FTA fails to explore prospects for radical social change,
‘‘Open-source foresight''and‘‘Open-source FTA''might be the terms by which this sort of KM becomes known15 but that is up to the wisdom (or otherwisej) of crowds.
Springer, Berlin, 2008.6 I. Miles, From Futures to Foresight, in: L. Georghiou, J. Cassingena Harper, M. Keenan,
The Handbook of Technology foresight, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2008.7 I. Miles, J. Cassingena Harper, L. Georghiou, M. Keenan, R. Popper, The Many Faces of Foresight, in:
The Handbook of Technology foresight, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2008.8 A. Weinberg, Science and trans science, Minerva 10 (2)( 1972) 209 222.9 A. Horton, Foresight how to do simply and successfully, Foresight
1 (1)( 1999) 5 9. 10 R. Popper, Foresight methodology, in: L. Georghiou, J. Cassingena Harper, M. Keenan,
The Handbook of Technology foresight, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2008.11 J. F. Coates, J. B. Mahaffie, A. Hines, 2025:
12 D. Loveridge, O. Saritas, Reducing the democratic deficit in institutional foresight programmes: a case for critical systems thinking in nanotechnology, Technological forecasting and Social Change 76 (9)( 2009) 1208 1221.13 I. Miles, UK Foresight:
three cycles on a highway, International Journal of Foresight and Innovation policy 2 (1)( 2005) 1 34.14 T. Ko nno la, T. Ahlqvist, A. Eerola, S
. Kivisaari, R. Koivisto, Management of foresight portfolio analysis of modular foresight projects at contract research organisation, Technological Analysis & Strategic management 21 (3)( 2009) 381 405.15 E. Eriksson
, M. Weber, Adaptive foresight: Navigating the complex landscape of policy strategies, Technological forecasting and Social Change 75 (4)( 2008) 462 482.16 M. Jaspers, H. Banthien, J. Mayer-Ries, New forms
of knowledge management in participatory foresight: the case of‘Future',Seville, First International EU US Seville Seminar on Future-oriented technology analysis, 2004 (available at http://forera. jrc. ec. europa. eu/fta/papers
/Papers%20from%20posters/New%20-forms%20of%20knowledge%20management. pdf (accessed 09/02/10)).17 M. H. Boisot, Information Space.
Jorgensen, Technology foresight in the nordic countries, A Report to the Nordic Industrial Fund, Oslo, Center for Innovation and Commercial Development, Risoe-R-1362 (EN),
2002 http://www. risoe. dk/rispubl/SYS/ris-r-1362. htm (accessed 09/02/10). 22 A. Eerola, B. H. Jørgensen, Foresight in Nordic
The Handbook of Technology foresight, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2008.12 Quoted from http://ec. europa. eu/research/fp6/ssp/swami en. htm,
Emerging Foresight, in: L. Georghiou, J. Cassingena Harper, M. Keenan, I. I. Miles, R. Popper (Eds.),
The Handbook of Technology foresight, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2008.24 R. Koivisto, N. Wessberg, A. Eerola, T. Ahlqvist, S. Kivisaari, J. Myllyoja, M. Halonen
A Fantasy of Love and Discord, Secker and Warburg, London, 1944.31 C. Warden, An application of some knowledge management concepts in foresight, Technology foresight for Organizers, 2007, Module 1:
Training Programme on Technology foresight, UNIDO Regional Initiative on Technology foresight for Central and Eastern europe and the Newly Independent States, Gebze, Turkey, 19 23 november 2007.32 K. E. Weick, Sensemaking in Organizations
The Handbook of Technology foresight, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, UK, 2008.38 M. Alavi, D. E. Leidner, Review:
and use of FTA in the public sector there has been substantial growth in foresight and FTA in business.
Most recently, foresight studies have stormed onto the scene to become a global phenomenon. Globalisation and its offspring glocalisation have moved centre stage and now present three pillars corporate industrial activity,
these are all behavioural components of participants in Foresight. CSH also seeks to give a voice in the decisionmaking process to those who suffer the consequences.
Loveridge and Street 13 suggest that an Inclusive foresight may be expected to: -Create greater public awareness and understanding of new science and future technologies.
p. 72.13 D. Loveridge, P. Street, Inclusive foresight, Foresight 7 (3)( 2005) 31 47.14 D. Loveridge, Foresight:
A Stakeholder Approach, Pitman, Boston, 1984.18 O. Saritas, L. Pace, S. Stalpers, Stakeholder participation and Dialogue in Foresight, From Oracles to Dialogue:
*Jack E. Smith b a Manchester Institute of Innovation research, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, M13 9pl Manchester, UK b Federal Foresight & Innovation strategy, Defence
and Conferences was expressed the concern by some attendees that an opportunity was being missed to use the assembly of Strategic foresight experts to gain more insights into the state of Foresight content regarding critical issues and trends,
managing and interpreting the outcomes of Foresight exercises that involve leaders from a diverse range of governments,
It has been structured to allow the Conference attendees, mainly the organizers and practitioners of Foresight, an opportunity to contribute to a value-adding Futures 43 (2011) 292 312 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
1 UK Ministry of Defence, UK Foresight Office Horizon scan; Global Futures Forum Vancouver April 2008, Europe@2025 European commission.
10.1016/j. futures. 2010.11.007 Foresight knowledge base regarding the directions and catalysts that are prompting our global future and its various contingencies and uncertainties.
ii) Foresight experience, and (iii) principle affiliation/role. The results are analysed in greater detail in the fifth section.
to be based in the Foresight directorate of the Government office for Science (see www. foresight. gov. uk). As another example,
and questions for policy 1. Work conducted within the scope of the European foresight monitoring Network (EFMN) included a strong element of scanning in the form of detecting
because it was considered that a clear definition of the terms supported with examples would help the participants in completing the survey, particularly those with less Foresight experience,
It has been said (by some practiced Foresight facilitators) that drivers are those critical choices, forks in the road and deep uncertainties that keep executives awake at night.
which may be amenable to changes according to one's strategic choices, investments, R&d activities or foresight knowledge and strategies.
The concept of uncertainty enters again into the Foresight process when for purposes of scenario planning there is an attempt to define the key drivers
This is a key element of the art of crafting Foresight to respond well to plausible uncertainties and conceivable surprises,
'Steinmueller 8 also has an excellent overview of wild cards in the 2008 RAHS Booklet on Foresight:
which relevant Foresight information might be inferred. Sometimes, mistakenly, wild cards and weak signals are considered as synonyms,
The following definition indicates how discontinuities are being positioned by them for Foresight purposes:‘‘‘‘Discontinuities, which are those sudden, sharp breaks that can strike consumers, business sectors, nations,
(FTA) 2008 Conference, previous FTA meetings tended to focus on methodology, policy linkages and success factors for Foresight design & delivery.
The Scientific Committee of the FTA 2008 Conference heard that some attendees felt that an opportunity had been missed to discuss future Foresight determinants
i e. content for Foresight structuring with so many experienced experts. As a result, the Big Picture Survey was designed
1. The FTA COMMUNITY is one of the most capable assemblies of Strategic foresight expertise, and would it not be useful to poll this group for Foresight insights?
2. Building on a survey of FTA Conference attendees-experts about critical trends, drivers, shocks-wildcards, discontinuities and weak signals, new insights can be gained about the state of Foresight and future uncertainties,
which should be useful to the community. 3. 1. 1. The structure of the survey The survey consisted of two main parts.
1. Years of Foresight experience; 2. Country of residence; 3. Affiliation-type of organization represented. Then, the in the second part, the respondents were asked to identify a list of trends, drivers of change, wild cards/shocks, weak signals and discontinuities.
Qualitative review of Foresight (content) insights and patterns; 3. 1. 3. Further analysis Analysis of each of the Domains of Interest according to%distribution by years of experience, country of residence, affiliation;
Comparison of FTA COMMUNITY insights-domains content with others sources of Foresight trends, drivers, etc. Table 1 STEEP map for the Domains of Interest.
The majority of respondents engaged in Foresight activity 5 10 years as expected a quite experienced group of professionals (Fig. 2). The survey respondents were mainly from Academia and Governmental bodies (Fig. 3). 3. 2. 2
TD$FIG Fig. 2. Foresight experience. O. Saritas, J. E. Smith/Futures 43 (2011) 292 312 299 The diagram illustrates that:
Joint assessment of Foresight experience and trends. The respondents with more than 15 years of experience constituted the largest single group,
and that they would be motivated by the opportunity to add content ideas additional to their evident Foresight process expertise.
and essentially weathered it. 3. 2. 2. 4. Joint assessment of Foresight affiliation and trends.
Almost all respondents from different Foresight affiliations stated that over 70%of the trends identified will have high impact on the STEEP systems.
and differentiated. 3. 2. 3. 1. Joint assessment of Foresight experience and drivers of change. A balanced distribution is observed among the respondents with 1 3, 5 10 and over 15 years experience.
Joint assessment of Foresight affiliation and drivers. Respondents from Academia and Government took the lead in drivers assessment with 32%and 25%respectively.
no significant differences were encountered regarding the impact assessment based on Foresight affiliation. The majority of respondents (around 68%)consider that the drivers will have high impact on the STEEP systems,
O. Saritas, J. E. Smith/Futures 43 (2011) 292 312 307 3. 2. 5. 1. Joint assessment of Foresight experience and discontinuities.
or focus group opportunities to probe the differences in perception of discontinuities. 3. 2. 5. 3. Joint assessment of Foresight affiliation and discontinuities.
Around 70%of all respondents from various Foresight affiliations that assessed discontinuities expect high impact.
The respondents with a Foresight experience longer than 1 year expect most the majority of the weak signals to emerge in the medium term future (2016 2025),
and insights that can be used to guide future Foresight work and additional FTA surveys of this type or building upon this base.
the EFMN issue analysis, Foresight 10 (2008) 6, 90 102.3 DCDC, The DCDC Global Strategic Trends Programme:
17 Y. Nugroho, O. Saritas, Incorporating network perspectives in Foresight: a methodological proposal, Foresight 11 (2009) 6, 21 41.
O. Saritas, J. E. Smith/Futures 43 (2011) 292 312 312
The influence of future-oriented technology analysis: Addressing the Cassandra challenge§Ron Johnston a,,*Cristiano Cagnin b a Australian Centre for Innovation, Australia b European commission, DG Joint research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, Spain‘‘Cassandra was a daughter of Hecuba
http://www. aciic. org. au 1 Of course foresight does not claim to‘tell the truth';
''It was argued that many foresight studies had pointed to the possibility of a collapse in the global economic system 2
‘‘We have moved from the spectacular mountains of individual foresight studies to the range of foothills of distributed and embedded foresight projects, less visible but probably far greater in volume''.
appropriate budget and techniques alone are insufficient to result in foresight program success. To be regarded as successful,
government led foresight programs need to focus on a clearly identified client, there needs to be a clear link between the foresight (topic and process) and the government's policy agenda''.
''These themes were reflected in the expert interviews. Based on experience of formal evaluation of foresight programs, it was claimed that‘‘lack of success had very little to do with the quality of the work that has been done and much more to do with initial and subsequent political positioning''.
''If the program has built-in channels such that decision-makers feel ownership and are ready to take notice it seems to have a greater impact.
If it is sponsored by an organisation that is out of favour then regardless of the quality of the foresight work there may be little impact.
‘‘while you can always tell when a foresight program starts, it is more difficult to tell where it ends''.
''This raises the issue of when those responsible for the foresight project should hand it over to the relevant stakeholders.
Experience from the UK foresight program points towards the value of a significant period of‘aftercare,
The focus of the Conference was on foresight, technology forecasting and technology assessment methods and tools.
however, do not imply an automatic rise in the use of foresight or FTA TOOLS. Many decision-makers remain ignorant of or unpractised with these tools,
Sandy Thomas Foresight, UK Government office for Science. References 1 L. Fitton, Cassandra: Cursed Prophetess, 1998, accessed at http://www. arthistory. sbc. edu/imageswomen/papers/fittoncassandra/intro. html. 2 For example V. van Rij, Joint horizon scanning:
FTA Conference, Seville, 2008.3 J. Calof, J. Smith, Critical success factors for government led foresight, in:
New technology Foresight, Forecasting & Assessment Methods, 2004, European communities Technical Report EUR 21473 EN. 5 F. Scapolo, New horizons and challenges for future-oriented technology analysis:
http://forera. jrc. ec. europa. eu/fta 2008/conclusions. html. 10 UK Foresight programme, Flood and Coastal Defence, 2004, http://www. foresight. gov
. uk/Ourwork/Completedprojects/Flood/index. asp. 11 UK Foresight programme, Tackling Obesities: Future Choices, 2007, http://www. foresight. gov. uk/Ourwork/Activeprojects/Obesity/Obesity. asp.
R. Johnston, C. Cagnin/Futures 43 (2011) 313 316 316
Guest editorial FTA break new ground in response to grand challenges Vicente Carabias, Peter De Smedt and Thomas Teichler Abstract Purpose This Guest Editorial aims
ISSN 1463-6689 jforesight j PAGE 279 Vicente Carabias is a Senior Scientist in‘‘Foresight and Sustainable development''and EU Contact Point at the Institute of Sustainable development,
and later derives implications for the application of foresight in policy-making. The aim of the scenario task presented in the paper by Heinonen
and benefits of linking territorial foresight tools to urban planning procedures. In addition they suggest ways to reinforce the scenario design method with more in depth analysis,
In addition, the study confirms that foresight offers interesting opportunities for urban planners, such as anticipating changes,
foresight methods represent an emerging approach that works with few technical constraints and shows an increased adaptability to environmental changes.
If this is achieved, the chances are high that foresight will elicit less technical skepticism in the urban planning realm.
is responsible for European cooperation and for coordinating foresight activities as well as the research area on sustainable energy systems at the ZHAW Institute of Sustainable development.
and currently leading OPTIMISM (TPT-FP7) and IFA International foresight Academy (FP7) and contributing to various FP7 projects (EFP, SESTI and ERA NET RUS) recently at JRC-IPTS,
sustainability and foresight research by applying monitoring and evaluation systems, Delphi survey, SWOT analysis and scenario development methods in various contexts over the last ten years.
On a broad range of regional and EU projects, involving foresight and integrated assessment, Peter worked together with experts
Currently Peter works at the Research centre of the Flemish Government, where he is in charge of foresight and sustainability assessment.
He has a broad experience in foresight and the analysis of innovation and research policy with a particular focus on the civil security sector.
Thomas led several foresight projects, among them the FP-financed SANDERA study on the future interaction of security policy and the European research area.
Complexity science approaches to the application foresight Averil Horton Abstract Purpose This paper aims to present an exploration of recent work in complexity theory to explain why
and a general experience of applying foresight. Several new and practical implications for foresight techniques and their application are derived.
Promoting variation is examined as one way to make policies more resilient in a complex system. Findings Complexity science demonstrates that disruptive events do need not an associated trigger
Foresight techniques need to be developed to embrace emergence and to provide capabilities such as reframing to visualise systems from very different perspectives,
Originality/value Although neither complexity theory nor the concept of reframing is new in the area of foresight
the derivation of practical implications for foresight techniques is original. Keywords Complexity, Disruptive events, Emergence, Reframing, Variation, Policy making, Complexity theory, Uncertainty management, Strategic planning Paper type Conceptual paper 1. Foresight techniques To date,
foresight techniques (see http://hsctoolkit. tribalhosting. net/The-tools. html for a summary of techniques,
applications and case studies) have developed out of need (see www. andyhinesight. com/category/foresight-2/(accessed August 2011) re practitioner usage);
they are highly pragmatic, were developed originally for use in commercial organisations, and are used because they deliver useful insights However,
other than some postgraduate foresight programs (provided on the basis that foresight is an interdisciplinary field grounded in a variety of social science),
or rationale, for either foresight or its techniques, Gheorghiou et al. 2008) and Miller (2011. In many ways, foresight techniques also originally arose out of the need to deal with unexpected events in the technology and political arenas, for example the classic Shell scenarios.
More recently the development of techniques for coping with disruptive events, often referred to as wild cards,
so has limited some work in the foresight field, Ringland (2010) and Miller and Poli (2010),
but there has been little specific consideration of how foresight techniques need to PAGE 294 jforesight j VOL. 14 NO. 4 2012, pp. 294-303, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited,
or understanding, on how to really apply (implement) foresight and how to extract real value from the results of foresight studies and projects.
Much foresight work, while very interesting and great fun to discuss over dinner, goes unused, unappreciated,
and makes little observable difference. Foresight may be either an art or a science, Bell (2003),
and may or may not be, a discipline, (or perhaps be developing into one), but either way, a critical thinking approach can be helpful.
and most importantly lead to better decision-making and policy making (and perhaps contribute to use of theories of social change in foresight).
what is its relevance to foresight? There are of course as many answers as people, including Prigogine and Stengers (1984), Byrne (1998) Mitchell (2009), Goodwin (1994), Strogatz (2003),
This paper will explore some selected elements of complexity theory and their implications for foresight techniques,
and later derive implications for the application of foresight in policy making. There are five relevant elements of complex systems:
The implication is that foresight techniques must be able to embrace emergence 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,
The implication is that foresight techniques must be able to accommodate changes in the basic rules.
Foresight techniques need to enable a vision of changes in the essential profile of a system. 3. The interactions between the component parts of a complex system
The implication is that foresight techniques need to accommodate phase change situations, accepting that they will happen,
Foresight techniques need to enable visions of phase-changed worlds. Foresight techniques must also accept the likely absence of any early warning signals. 4. Extreme sensitivity to initial conditions.
The starting slate is never clean extremely tiny errors in understanding where the system starts from can send any‘‘forecast''off in totally the wrong direction.
The implication is that foresight techniques need to recognise that a system has a critical history
Foresight techniques need to recognise that everything is part of a system, that there is no‘‘new''starting point,
The implication is that foresight techniques must be able to provide both optimisation and exploration processes to help identify a range of potential future situations and options.
Foresight techniques need to enable practitioners to see the landscape from different perspectives and to generate both optimum and (currently) non-optimum alternative potential strategies and options.
considering these different definitions before looking in more detail at how complexity can contribute to improved foresight application.
From a foresight perspective however, Axelrod's (1985) is the most useful: Agents, of a variety of types, use their strategies, in patterned interaction, with each other and with artefacts.
In summary the implications of complexity theory for foresight techniques are that they must: B Enable a vision of a system's emergent properties.
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,
''From the perspective of applying foresight the benefits of reframing are: B realising that there are more choices than thought,
''Some foresight techniques do use Reframing, for example in causal layered analysis, Inayatullah (1990), employs reframing at the deep myth/metaphor level. 4. Results policy making implications We all have our favourite story of a failed
or ludicrous policy where a lack of foresight is obvious in retrospect. The lesson is often that the environment/time/space/area in
The key insight of complexity-based foresight for policy making is that command and control approaches do not work in complex systems.
Battram (2000) and Swanson and Bhadwal (2009), have considered how complexity-based foresight can be applied to policy making.
and intellectually satisfying to re-invent the whole policy making process in the light of complexity-based foresight,
which implications for the application of complexity-based foresight in policy making will take place, at least for a while.
Promoting variation can provide a response to several of the requirements of foresight techniques identified above in Section 2. For example it can contribute to generating a range of future options and alternative potential strategies through both optimisation and exploration.
It also provides insight into how foresight techniques need to be developed to perform better in complex systems to enable better decision-making and policy making.
and strengthen those policies VOL. 14 NO. 4 2012 jforesight jpage 301 Foresight methodology Foresight techniques need to be developed to embrace emergence to harness the self-organised behaviour that results from interactions between the parts of a complex system rather than
Foresight techniques must provide policy makers with the ability to generate a range of future options
Policy making needs foresight techniques to enable a vision of the system's emergent properties and also of phase change situations (without early warning signals) and of the resulting changed world.
Policy making needs Foresight techniques to enable the generation of a range of future options and alternative potential strategies through both optimisation and exploration, including some that sound negative, ludicrous,
Bhimji, W. 2009), Guidance on the Use of Strategic foresight Analysis for Policy development in Government, UK Government office for Science, London, available at:
www. bis. gov. uk/assets/foresight/docs/horizonscanning-centre/futuresinpolicyguidance. pdf (accessed 6 june 2012. Byrne, D. 1998), Complexity theory and the Social sciences:
I. 2008), The Handbook of Technology foresight: Concepts and Practice, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, pp. 3-23.
A comment on Jay Ogilvy's‘Facing the fold'''Foresight, Vol. 13 No. 4, pp. 24-34.
Miller, R. and Poli, R. 2010),‘Introduction to a Special issue on anticipatory systems and the philosophical foundations of future studies'',Foresight, Vol. 12 No. 3. Mitchell, M. 2009), Complexity:
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