including the challenges resulting from the above listed trends 38.2.2.2. Futures research and open innovation Futures research aims at systematically exploring
‘‘To inspire, to challenge, to do''and‘‘Long-term thinking, short-term action''.''3 After having been carried out within various departments in RWS itself,
and reposition of innovation portfolio Provide strategic guidance Identify new business models Consolidate opinions Vision creation Opponent role Challenge basic assumptions Scan for disruptions that could endanger current
and exploit new topics and challenges successfully (efficiency) and (3) stakeholder management. Effectiveness and efficiency are addressed by several activities in the network:
the re-integration of information (outside-in) into the organization is apparently quite a challenge. In Table 5 the foresight activities are summarized briefly
Rijkswaterstaat was interested primarily in innovations that addressed societal challenges while companies inherently seek to satisfy shareholders,
managerial challenges develop due to the size of the network. While the shared vision of the EIT ICT Labs serves as a common denominator,
a new challenge for a regional approach to innovation systems, European Planning Studies 15 (2006) 195 215.17 H. A. von der Gracht, C. R. Vennemann,
which addressed the challenge of increasing the impact of future-oriented technology analysis on policy and decision-making. HE RECENT ONSET OF CRISES AND challenges ranging from climate change, finanncia and economic downturns,
to security threats highlight a rising need to incorporate more forward-looking approaches into the decisionmakkin processes of public and private organisations and stakeholders all around the world.
forecasting and technology assessment to reflect on these challenges. The third conference focused on the impact that FTA can have on policy and decisiionmaking and its implications.
This renders decisiionmaking smarter and more capable of tackling expected future challenges. Although the applicatiion described in the papers are very different,
addressing the Cassandra challenge. Futures (in press. Keenan, R and R Popper (eds. 2007. Guide to Research Infrastruccture Foresight.
and environmental challenges and in addressing the potential of emerging areas of science and technology in an integrated way.
and connects this to emerging challenges. An increasing number of countries in Europe are considering undertaking horiizo scanning activities in the near future like Malta, Norway,
and research programming on strategic challenges and questions within these issue clusters. Preparing further cooperation
emerging challenges for society, but also for promising opportunities, some of which may originate in new or Emerging s&t findings and insights.
2006) instrumeen that deliberately challenge policy-makers to look at the uncertainties and the unexpected and deveelo resilient policies towards sustainability.
challenges and optioons to provide the basis for resilient and (where appropriate) cross-departmental policies.
which adapted the issue descriptions to the Danish situation after Horizon scanning can be seen as an adaptive foresight instrument that deliberately challenges policy-makers to look at uncertainties
which is acknowledged in the research 2015 document (Daniis Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, 2008) that sets the stage for research prioritisation in Denmark for the coming four years in a clear relationnshi to the challenges facing
Cooperation The use of joint scan data at the European level could offer a useful way of addressing the complex challenges the world
and which will focus on the use of scan data to address particular challenges that were indicated in the EC's World 2025 exercise (Fauroult, 2009).
The challenges for local governance in 2015. Available from<http://www. communities. gov. uk/pub/326/Allourfuturestechni calannexandappendices id1165326. pdf>,last accessed 1 Octoobe 2008.
What Broad Security Challenges May Canada Face by 2015? Technology foresight directorate of the office of the national science advisor.
The project succeeded in defining scenarios for the creative content industries, offering distinct trajectories and raising different policy challenges.
Established FTA approaache tend to struggle with the double challenge of exploring future trajectories of extremely fastchanngin areas like creative content
but also to provide novel and concrete recommendations on how to deal with the upcoming challenges.
Delineation of the creative content sector The first challenge encountered when dealing with creative content industries is their diversity.
However, in spite of the diversity of the various creative content sub-sectors, the convergence of digital content and media has given already way to a growing convergence of future issues in these subsecttors Many of the challenges
There are also cultural challenges implying that content is not a product like any other but also a cultural good and an expression of diversiit in Europe.
While all the steps leading to the policy analysis revealed important findings on potential directions of change and consequently possible challenges for policy-making,
Challenges for policy-making The challenge for policy-makers and regulators is to help create an enviroonmen
Awarenees of the issues and challenges raised subsequently will be decisive for fulfilling this task. The policy issues that have been identified incllud fostering ICT and creative skills:
and the challenge that loosening them could pose for prevailing business models, while opening up opportunities for small enterprises and amateurs to develop innovative products and services.
Finally, the creative content sector foresight becaam a particular challenge because of the high degrre of uncertainty in all (technological, economic, social and structural) dimensions,
and scoped to connect to emerging poliic challenges. A review of the literature reveals much in the way of foresight methodology
and quality of social interactions Aid and help elaborate discussions of the future Facilitate thinking out of the box, challenge mindsets Creation of new networks and clusters of expertise,
and their changes to system actors Development of significant new ways of thinking about challenges and opportunities Promote collective learning through open exchanges of information
What were the challenges? Were you copying other national efforts? To whom did your country look to
or an ongoiin challenge and that indicated progress was made beiin. Public private partnerships: Most program expeert extolled the good relationships they had developed with industry leaders,
incluudin both its challenges and opportunities, can be appreciated. All of the agencies contacted realiize how critical this aspect of forward readinees has become.
structures and processses The key requirement seems to be creating the close linkages with policy-makers that in turn appear to be mainly dependent upon their sensitivity to futuur challenges,
survival and the dynamics of managing regime transitions that remain a continuing challenge to foresight advocates
The new challenge in the present study is the roadmapping of converging technologies within the diversity of the Asia-pacific region.
Within the scope of existing and new technollog development to combat EID, the study proviide evidence of how the FTA can address societal issues and challenges,
Challenges and necessary collaborations are shown also with respect to the short-,medium, -and longteer time horizons. Diagnosis of infectious diseases is done usually by detecting causative agents (virus, bacterium, etc.
and personal diagnostic technologies in the community without adverse implications Education and communication to public (so that public understands the significance of EID control) Challenges:
It is believed that this kind of comprehensive FTA will increasingly be needed as the nature of the new challenges to humankind are increasingly borderless
Challenges of user involvement in future technology analysis Katrien De Moor, Katrien Berte, Lieven De Marez, Wout Joseph, Tom Deryckere and Luc Martens The shift
two challenges are discussed that are crucial to true user-driven innovation, i e. the challenge of continuously involving the user
and the need for tools to facilitate the integration of knowledge into the increasingly interdisciplinary development process.
we illustrate how the two challenges can be tackled. HE INDUSTRY THAT DEVELOPS informattio and communication technologies (ICT) has been challenged in various ways over the last few decades.
we then identify two imporrtan challenges for scholars and practitioners from a user-driven innovation perspective.
to illustrate how the two challenges can be tackled. Finally, we summarriz our findings and identify some opportunities for further research in this field.
However, this shift towards user-driven innovatiio also brings problems and challenges, such as the issue of the continuous involvement of users and the discrepancy between theory and practice in this respeect Although the user-driven innovation paradigm advocates an open perspective
176) This challenge requires a consolidation of knowleddg and tools from various disciplines (e g. foresigght design,
The following section discusses two of these challenges, which were underlying the objectives of the ROMAS project.
Integration challenges Challenge 1: Continuous and adequate interaction with the user The first challenge concerns the need for the continnuou and adequate involvement of the user.
Severra scholars have focused on the fact that there are still only a few companies that effectively involve the customer or user in the innovation process (Alam, 2002;
and technology The second challenge concerns the problem of integraatin the knowledge being gathered by multidiscipliinar teams,
the adequate translation and transformation of user insights and requirements into more technical requirements (and vice versa), is still a challenge.
its adequate measureemen and translation remains a challenge: insigght into users'experiences and expectations (e g. in a particular context or for a certain application) are shared often not in an interdisciplinary developmeen team.
The next section illustrates how both challenges were tackled in the interdisciplinary ROMAS projeect The results are structured into three main reseaarc stages.
In order to illustrate how the abovementioned integrratio challenges were tackled in ROMAS, we zoom in on distinct moments of user involvement during the three stages (see Figure 1),
One of the major challenges at this stage was not only to successfully involve users in this early part of the process,
and the way the abovementioned challenges were tackled. We now briefly turn to the five stages. 1. Pre-usage user research to detect relevant Qoe elements and user expectations.
two crucial challenges were identified: the need for continnuou interaction with the user and the need for mechanisms to integrate the knowledge that is gatherre in the increasingly multidisciplinary developmeen process.
in order to illustrate how both challenges can be tackled. Drawiin on results selected from three distinct points of user involvement in the process of developing new products (i e. opportunity identification, concept evaluation and test market),
The challenge of user-and Qoe-centric research and product development in today's ICT environment.
The role of FTA in responding to grand challenges: A new approach for STI policy? Mark Boden1,,
, systems, rules and practices in response to grand societal challenges. This introductory paper provides an overview of selected conference contributions and the perspectives in
which they address key issues in the development and implementation of FTA in relation to these challenges.
The Fourth International Seville Conference on Future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) entitled‘‘FTA and Grand Societal Challenges: Shaping and Driving Structural and Systematic Transformations organised by the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies of the European commission's Joint research Centre (JRC-IPTS) was held in May 2011.
This edition of the conference focussed on the need and potential of FTA to address disruptive transformations in global and national structures, systems, rules and practices in response to grand societal challenges.
These grand challenges include the dynamics of demograpphic (ageing and migration), food supply, environmentta sustainability, climate change, decarbonised economic systems, poverty, terrorism, not to mention the continuing fallout from the long-running‘global financial crisis':
Current and future societal challenges as well as their combination emerge from such transformations and call for appropriate forms of FTA to support
and‘wickedness'of grand challenges poses a fundamental problem for existing governance structures. Historically evolved systems of national and international public administtratio demonstrably have fundamental difficulties in addressing grand challenges that is not the kind of univeers they were designed to handle.
Hence the essentially accommodation responses that have been demonstrated‘we know how to negotiate treaties so that is what we will Science and Public policy 39 (2012) pp. 135 139 doi:
to address the complexity of the grand challenges. Sadly the experience of international organisations established to provide a supranational mechanism for addressing such issues suggests that these models are incapable of engaging with such issues.
and innovattio system towards major societal challenges, with greater integration of FTA;.the development and implementation of new approaches to FTA, particularly the application of horizon scanning;.
and increasinngl transnational, research and innovation systems can be seen to offer the most effective approach to meeting crosscutting societal challenges.
Cagnin, Amanatidou and Keenan address the roles that FTA can play in orienting the innovation system to more effectively address the grand challenges.
Weber, Cassingena Harper, Ko nno la and Carabias suggest that addressing the grand challenges requires a new kind of FTA.
Cutler, Marks, Meylan, Smith and Koivisto take the view that science will play a key role in society's response to emergent global grand challenges such as resource scarcity and global environmental change.
Science itself will also be a source of new challenges but also opportunities through its contribution to technologgica change in areas such as:
and human sciences, could play in addressing future global grand challenges. Ahlqvist Valovirta and Loikkanen describe the developmmen of a new policy instrument, innovation policy roadmapping,
and its role in assisting in aligning technologgica and societal perspectives with the more visionary framework necessary to address grand challenges.
and also the challenges posed to foresight design and management. They elaborate three central guiding foresight principles:
Time for the EU to meet global challenges'(Boden et al. 2010) to illustrate how horizon scanning can enable collective sense-making processes which assist in the identification of emerging signals and policy issues, the synthesis of such issues into encompassing clusters,
The experience of FTA practitioners in implementing foresight tools provides further evidence of the effectivenees of particular tools in meeting particular challenges in the most appropriate ways.
Case study evidence is a core The role of FTA in responding to grand challenges. 137 feature of every FTA conference.
Cuhls, Bunkowski and Behlau provide a case study of the Fraunhofer Institutes'action-oriented foresight process of using global challenges to identify and implemeen research themes for future markets.
In 2010, global challenges were identified, analysed, restructured and selected according to potential Fraunhofer contributions and market potential.
and develop interdisciplinary research projects to tackle these challenges. Collaboration and interdisciplinary problemsollvin approaches are fostered as project consortia have to consist of at least four institutes, preferably with diverging technological competences.
and wicked, challenges. The contributions to this special issue, as well as to the FTA conference more generally, clearly demonstrate there is a growing volume of valuable and appropriable experiennc in the development and application of fta, in terms of both the process and methods and the organisational context in
The emergence of the communication capacities of social networking technologies is itself providing a challenge to existing systems,
but as necessary evolutions to keep pace with wicked problems and challenges. There is also an obvious need to adapt to
The challenge for STI policy therefore, would appear to be:.acknowledgement of the deep inadequacies of vertically structured systems and processes,
Time for the EU to meet global challenges',24364 EN, 6/2010. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European commission.
The role of FTA in responding to grand challenges. 139
Challenges in communicating the outcomes of a foresight study to advise decision-makers on policy and strategy Claudio Chauke Nehme1, 2,,
*Marcio de Miranda Santos1, Lelio Fellows Filho1 and Gilda Massari Coelho1 1center for Strategic Studies and Management (CGEE), SCN Q. 2, Bl.
chauke@cgee. org. br This paper addresses the challenges of communicating the results of a strategic foresight exercise
new perspectives and opportunity maps present themselves to a corporation through identifying its challenges and strengths (Coates, cited by Miles et al. 2008).
Again, this is another challenge, as different stakeholders usually have divergent perspectives for defining the best route towards the desired future.
Challenges in communicating the outcomes of foresight studies. 247. The culture of looking ahead, having the past as an important reference..
Challenges in communicating the outcomes of foresight studies. 249 The foresight exercise itself comprises three distinct phases:
the challenge of engaging clients and stakeholders in the main and commitmeen phases depends on the ability of the coordination team to link the participating stakeholders to the technical and scientific communities and vice versa.
considering existing challenges to Brazilian energy matrix in next 20 years Technologies for generation of electric energy, fuel supply and energy transmission and distribution, distributed generaatio and storage, planning
challenges and opportunities for biotechnollog in Brazil, with particcula focus on research and commercialization of geneticaall modified organisms (GMOS).
and nanotechnologies in selected countries Challenges in communicating the outcomes of foresight studies. 251 supporting basic and applied research;
In the case of FINEP, the challenge of promoting out-of-the-box thinking was very complex.
The major challenge in the development of prospective studies is to identify which events or change drivers are actually relevant
Challenges in communicating the outcomes of foresight studies. 255 6. Lessons learned and main conclusions The items briefly discussed here summarize the main lesson learned,
The main challenge is to introduce long-term perception and analysis to foster strategic foresight of interest to the state more than a given government structure.
and be prepared better to face the challenges ahead..The establishment of a foresight culture within organizattion or industries,
Challenges in communicating the outcomes of foresight studies. 257
Head in the clouds and feet on the ground: Research priority setting in China Mats Benner1, Li Liu2,
With the tougher fiscal climate of the 1960s and 1970s and the rise of several political challenges, a new steering model emerged where political priorities invaded the decisionmakkin process more explicitly (Elzinga 1985.
Today's mechanism for priority-setting in these countries is therefore a hybrid, sometimes drawing upon scientific expertise not only in low-level decision-making but also in the framing of societal challenges underlying science policy priorities (Pielke 2007),
or challenges considered to require policy intervention. Several national S&t programs and initiatives have been created following public appeals
They stressed the need to meet the challenges of the global technology revolution and competition and pointed to the US Strategic Defense Initiatives as well as Europe's EUREKA Program.
and to solve many of China's daunting challenges, by providing techniica solutions for overcoming problems such as scarcity of resources, provision of energy,
The challenges of biotechnology',International Political science Review, 26: 169 91. Wong, J.-W. 1998)‘ The relationship between bureaucratic organizzatio and agricultural innovation:
Orienting European innovation systems towards grand challenges and the roles that FTA can play Cristiano Cagnin1*,Effie Amanatidou2 and Michael Keenan3 1dg Joint research Centre Institute for Prospective and Technological Studies
cristianocagnin@gmail. com A strong research and innovation policy discourse has emerged in recent years around the need to address‘grand challenges',particularly at EU level.
This paper highlights the contributions that future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) might make to orienting innovation processes towards grand challenges.
while enabling a shift in innovattio foci towards grand challenges. However, FTA could be exploited better to deliver its structuring and capacity-building benefits
in order to effectively reorient the EU's innovation systems towards grand challenges. Keywords: innovation systems; grand challenges; european union; foresight; technology assessment. 1. Introduction Recent years have seen a great deal of discussion on how science,
technology and innovation (STI) systems might be reoriented to better address several grand challenges that affect not only contemporary societies but also the future of human civilisation itself.
This is part of a new mission-led approach to innovation policy that is more global in outlook and oriented towards more societal goals.
The issues covered by the term‘grand challenges'naturalll lend themselves to a global outlook, are grand in scope and scale,
and activists and the articulattio of such grand challenges is hardly novel. The main novelty lies in the increasing attention given to such issues in formulating new missions for STI policy.
journals. permissions@oup. com challenges are presently a major focus of research and innovaatio policies. The aim is to rejuvenate the European research area (ERA), an overt political project,
and articulation of grand challenges at the EU level will mobilise Member States to better synchronise their STI policy instruments,
Grand challenges are by nature complex and largely impervious to top-down rational planning approaches. Even their meanings tend to be highly contesste by different actors Furthermore,
Addressing grand challenges requires the pooling of different knowledge bases and, in particular, closer collaboration between the‘hard'and social sciences and humanities..
Cross-departmental coordination and coherence beyond the traditional silos that characterise policymakking Grand challenges require multi-agency respoonse
and sub-national agendas and activities to address grand challenges..Technology convergence or fusion that opens up new possibilities to manage,
and harmful symptoms associated with grand challenges..Cross-sectoral collaboration between various industries with the complementary assets to address grand challenges..
Longer-term time horizons to be introduced more expliciitl into shorter-term policy agendas and business planning practices.
If grand challenges are to be operationalised as rationales for STI policy interventions, the need to transcend these boundaries should be appreciated widely,
just as much exacerbate the problems associated with grand challenges as it can contribute to their solutions.
The STI agenda around grand challenges must therefore be about much more than just end-of-pipe technological fixes.
whether or not the new mission focus on grand challenges offers windows of opportunity for a more directed
and the need for an operational agenda that takes into consideration a context-sensitive approach required to address specific challenges.
This is followed by a discusssio (Section 4) of the systemic reorientation of innovattio systems towards grand challenges and the demands put on policy and governance.
Section 5 then explores the roles of fta in enabling a shift in innovation foci towards grand challenges.
as well as the contributtion FTA could make to orienting policy agendas towards grand challenges. Section 7 draws some conclusions. 2. Innovation:
Some essentials If innovation is to contribute to solving some of the grand challenges of our time,
In other words, it is important to move beyond the often glib political statements of the importance of innovation for grand challenges
This suggests there are many potential levers for shaping the direction of innovation towards grand challenges. At the same time, innovation is a systemic phenomenon by nature as it results from the continuing interaction between different actors and organisations (Freeman 1970.
This has implications for any attempts at guiding innovation activities towards grand challenges. Innovations can be radical and disruptive
when linking innovation agendas to grand challenges as it will likely act as a barrier to the radical changes that are needed probably.
and context-sensitive approach will be required that takes into account the nature of each challenge and the industries and sectors that need to react
Any reorientation of innovattio systems towards grand challenges is likely to require both the establishment of new organisations and the adaptation of existing ones..
This makes them an essential starting point in efforts to set in motion virtuous cycles of transformative change directed at grand challenges.
This is a potentially useful perspective for efforts directed at reorienting innovation systems towards grand challenges. Drawing upon a mix of sources (Bach and Matt 2005;
The mobilisation of resources has important consequences for knowledge development activities. 4. Orienting innovation systems towards grand challenges The special nature of the requirements of grand challenges to find effective solutions brings to the fore concepts such as transformative
Furthermore, grand challenges cannot be dealt effectively with through technological innovaation alone. They require broader changes in human perceptions and behaviour,
The challenge is for business, governments and societies to align and Orienting European innovation systems. 143 evolve into this new direction, identifying alternative solutiion and moving away from the current state of affairs.
The structural and functional elements of innovation systems presented above highlight sites for exploitation and intervention in support of grand challenges.
if innovation systems are to be oriented towards grand challenges. Starting with the structural elements, the global charactte of grand challenges and their boundary-spanning nature:
which sees them transcend both epistemic and administtrativ boundaries, implies a greater number and wider variety of actors involved in innovation systems.
Changes in soft institutions are likely to be particularly critical in determining progress in finding viable paths towards tackling grand challenges and any consequent change in paradigms that these may entail.
since certain grand challenges call for social responsibility and a business focus beyond a mere return on investment and greater orientation towards the public good.
Turning to the functions of innovation systems presennte earlier, Table 1 uses these to map a number of actions conducive to systemic reorientation towards grand challenges.
The key challenges lie in engaging differeen voices, protecting spaces, balancing vested interests, making connections, coordinating experiments, levering investments,
At the same time, appropriate constellations of policy interventions will vary, depending on specific challenges, opportunities and problems encountered in sectors, technologies and social networks (Stirling et al. 2009).
In this regard, FTA as a tool of governance could have a promising role to play in reorienting innovattio systems towards grand challenges. 5. FTA for orienting innovation systems towards grand challenges Th paper takes FTA to refer to systematic processes
or caused by grand challenges. Crucially at least from the perspective of transcending boundaries to better address grand challenges,
FTA PROCESSES bring longerteer perspectives and broader knowledge bases into decision-making processes. By doing so, they place greater emphasis on holistic and multiple perspective approaches under
so that they can better address grand challenges. These roles can be grouped under three main headings: informing decisionmakkin processes, structuring and mobilising actor networks,
when exploring the nature and impacts of grand challenges as well as their possible solutions. The knowledge developed under FTA helps to articulate visions and expectations
which to examine possible solutions to specific challenges. In this way, FTA PROCESSES inform and direct the search
and their reorientation towards grand challenges Reorientation towards grand challenges Facilitate experimentation and learning Solutions to grand challenges will require, in many instances, radical socio-technical innovations.
Experimentation and learning needs to be strengthened, with greater amounts of probing and experimenttatio in areas that are potentially relevant to grand challenges.
This can be facilitated through, for example, research and innovation programmes Knowledge development Transformative shifts implied by solutions to grand challenges will need new knowledge as well as a new type of knowledge production.
New knowledge (including also non-technological knowledge) has to be developed on topics relevant to grand challenges among a distributed landscape of actors.
This implies a type of knowledge production close to the so-called‘mode 2'(Nowotny et al. 2003) acknowledging the distributed nature of knowledge,
and facilitating knowledge creation across differeen boundaries at various levels (as explained in Section 2) Knowledge diffusion Knowledge diffusion is given essential the boundary-spanning nature of grand challenges.
and selection Dealing with grand challenges requires strong visions, strong in the sense that they constitute mobilising convictions among a large group of actors.
this is especially important given the boundary-spanning nature of grand challenges Orienting European innovation systems. 145 knowledge
such as those around the means to tackle grand challenges. More broadly, FTA can raise awareness and sensitise society towards sustainable solutions,
challenges via the adoption of forward-looking, collaborative routines and practices. This capacity-building role sees FTA PROCESSES potentially contributing to all innovation system functions by directly affecting the mind-sets and attitudes of individuals and the routines and capabilities of organisations.
and helping these to steer solutions to emerging challenges through joined-up decisions, thereby enabling the system to undertake systemic transitions and new configurations Figure 1. Some common uses of FTA.
C. Cagnin et al. 6. Implications for European collaborative programmes This section examines some of the recent STI policy initiatiive of the EU that seek to better orient policy agendas towards grand challenges
Addressing grand challenges is at the core of EU policies for research and innovation as illustrated by the latest EU strategic policy documents.
At the same time, the Innovation Union3 Flagship Initiative recognises that the same challenges also provide powerful opportunities to develop innovative products
creativity and cross-disciplinary research needed to tackle grand challenges, although this may be true to different degrees across the different research themes.
which are explicitly focusing on grand challenges. The Joint Programming Initiatives (JPIS) have been put forward as the main means for coordinating national and regional efforts towards commonly set research agendas and visions.
EIPS focus on innovations that address major societal challenges and pursue a broad concept of innovation involving all actors and regions in the innovation cycle,
business and academia to work together on major societal challenges. At the same time certain‘old'initiatives have become relevant in dealing with grand challenges.
These initiatives reflect the importance put on linking research to innovattio and creating viable PPPS, which is a longstanding feature of EU research and innovation policies.
6 are accommodattin a strong interest from industry to address major challenges. In the same vein, three PPPS were established under the European Economic Recovery Plan to help industries that were hit severely by the economic recession (Factories of the Future, Energy efficient Buildings and Green Cars.
However, their scope and focus acknowledge the boundary-spanning nature of grand challenges. They clearly highlight the inter-disciplinarity needed in the knowledge bases that have to be combined in searching for possible solutions
The identification of grand challenges and the corresponding priorities for research and innovation through the use of forward-looking activities is mentioned explicitly in the Council's conclusions (December 2009) 7 on guidance on future priorities for European research.
Especially in relation to knowledge productiion the role of FTA is seen to be important for encouraging the multi-disciplinarity needed both in terms of research focus as well as in the identification of policy implications given the interdependencies of grand challenges
Nevertheless, FTA could also play other potential roles in the new instruments dealing with grand challenges through better exploitation of its structuring and capacity-building roles
which are equally important in dealing with grand challenges although hardly recognised. With regards to its structuring role,
and develop will be crucial in trying to find novel solutiion to grand challenges. Such a role could be accommodated in the stages of shaping a common vision for the selected theme or challenge at hand,
in defining a common strategic research agenda, and in implemeentin a jointly defined strategy (e g. initiating risky
and complementarity needed in regional, national and EU-level efforts to tackle grand challenges. Additionally, the role of FTA in developing and mobilising resources becomes relevant in identifying the most relevant actors
which ultimately supports the achievement of the inclusiveness claimed to be needed in dealing with grand challenges.
thereby contributing to the creation of variety in innovation systems Informing role of FTA facilitates building of a common vision for a specific theme or challenge,
and create solutions to situations or challenges at hand Knowledge development FTA, as a source of‘strategic intelligence'for policy and other actors, is itself a knowledge-creating activity.
and impacts of grand challenges as well as their possible solutions Informing role of FTA can be embedded within EU instruments in the steps of challenge/problem identificatiion prioritisation of associated themes and areas for research,
and applying a forward looking approach to situation/challenge at hand Knowledge diffusion FTA involves bringing together often disparate actors that might not normally interact to imagine
and priorities Informing role of FTA can be embedded within EU instruments in the steps of challenge/problem identificatiion
in outlook and oriented towards so-called grand societal challenges. It has argued that a reorientation of innovation systems towards grand challenges could offer opportunities for a more responsible and transformative innovation practice to develop.
But it has highlighted also the boundary-spanning scope of grand challenges and the difficulties this implies in mobilising actors
and resources for enacting transformative change. A different type of innovation policy is required essentially that better acknowledges the co-evolutionary, multidimensional,
In this context, this paper has introduced some of the contributions that FTA could make to orienting innovattio systems towards grand challenges.
otherwise act as barriers to progress on addressing grand challenges. In this sense, it can perform a more structuring role for innovation systems in need of reorientation.
in effectively orienting innovation systems towards grand challenges remains under-exploited. One rectifying step would be to better consider the structural and functional aspects of innovattio systems with a view to identifying bottlenecks and appropriate points for effective policy intervention.
when identifying grand societal challenges as well as in translating an already identified grand challenge into an operational reality by defining scenarios,
and facilitate the application of fta approaches on a contining basis. Applying FTA in the framework of joint initiatives in dealing with grand challenges should aim both to find effective solutions for grand challenges
and contribute to a better appreciation of the roles FTA can play in reorientiin innovation systems towards grand challenges.
time for the EU to meet global challenges',EUR 24364 EN. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European union.<
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