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relationship to decision making, the extent of participation; the purpose of the analysis (awareness raising, envisioning, consensus building, corporate technology planning, etc;
but very necessary to embed futures analysis into the strategic decision-making process. The issue related to combination of methods was reviewed and
and decision process standardization. The paper discusses the importance of process management for dtech miningt, and how tech mining outcomes could be used for technology management
and toolbox of techniques to ensure that outcomes can be taken up in the decision-making process. The first contribution from van Merkerk and Van Lente, describes a methodology to map
whether strategic decisions should be deferred until more information is available and simultaneously whether to invest in (real) options
which would facilitate the implementation of such decisions if taken some future time. This does not mean that all strategic decisions should be deferred.
Rather it is the careful combining of commitment and opportunism that best enables actors to pursue their superordinate values and objectives.
and does have an impact on decision-making, and that a main criterion of effectiveness is that it should lead to a reconsideration
Other criteria such as a better understanding of future challenges and pathways or the formulation of alternative decision options are mere ancillary arguments.
The litmus test is the impact on decision-making, either in the shortteer or the long-term.
In order to have an impact on decision-making, it is necessary to create an explicit link between foresighting and decision-making.
Decision-making in relation to innovation and new technology be it from a company's or from a public policy perspective, is confronted with the need to navigate increasingly complex decision landscapes.
This complexity is due to the increasingly interactive and multi-actor character of innovation processes, a development that in conjunction with the new possibilities offered by information
and communication technologies has given rise to an internationalisation of research and innovation. This obviously makes the anticipation of future developments and their consequences more difficult than ever before.
forward-looking exercises must enable decision-makers to better understand and cope with this interactive, complex and inherently uncertain character of innovation.
and reflect an appropriate understanding of the changing characteristics of innovation and decision-making. Secondly, they should contribute to the mobilisation and coordination of the decision-making by different actors.
Thirdly, they must be able to deliver insights on possible strategies and options for individual actors on how to change course and direction,
New approaches to forward-looking decision support are currently being developed that take these requirements into account. Conventional forecasting approaches with their aim of predicting the future were based on a linear understanding of processes of socio-technical change that is simply an inappropriate representation of reality and thus misleading rather than enlightening with respect to informing decisions.
The foresight tradition that has become quite prominent particularly in public policy takes into account the interactive character of innovation
and tends to underestimate the limitations to which decision-making is subject in the face of interactive and globalised innovation processes.
and to guide decision-making of individual actors if foresight is to have a real impact. In this paper
we suggest an approach to forward-looking decision support that addresses the aforementioned shortcomings of conventional foresight. Under the headline of Adaptive foresight (AF) it combines elements from the foresight and adaptive planning traditions.
and hence more powerful basis for informing strategic decisions because it stresses both the need to adapt to changes in the environment
it is on the contrary essential to accept that decision-makers are confronted with uncertainty and that their strategies need to take the strategic behaviour of other actors into account.
when it comes to informing actual decision-making, say, on what RTD projects to fund and which not to fund. 2. 1. Foresight recent developments,
This converging understanding of the issues at play is expected to contribute to improving implicitly the coherence of the distributed decisions of these actors, in line with the shared mental framework developed.
Moreover, they tend to be regarded as a means to actually realise the expectations on which they build by influencing agenda-setting and decision-making.
6 their actual and traceable influence on decision-making seems to vary to a great extent. In some cases (e g. the UK Foresight Mark I) the influence seems to have been quite important
because the influence on participants'mindsets and decisions is hard to observe, as well as the influence on the wider public debates.
thus shows a number of shortcomings with respect to its impact on decision-making that can be summarised by the following three points:
regular updating to inform sequential decision-making). But this of course within the confines of linear innovation processes. 2. 2. Adaptive planning The type of (self-criticism levelled in the closing part of the previous section is in no way new to the foresight community,
adaptive planning suggests postponing decisions until we know more about the usefulness of different options that are kept open in the meantime.
A key dichotomy to adaptive planning is the one between one-stage vs. sequential decision-making. The decision-making we have in mind here is of strategic character,
i e. it deals with issues like what assets to acquire as opposed to the operational decisions on how to deploy
and use available assets. Note that we have chosen to pursue this general discussion in the context of systems that deliver tangible products
. 2. 1. One-stage decision-making, robust and flexible options While much single-stage decision-making, naturally, takes place under full realisation that subsequent decisions will follow,
it is surprising how not-so-old, authoritative texts on the subject fail to explicitly include sequential decision-making as a way for dealing with uncertainty. 9 Doing so they turn down to include in a rational decision framework,
as an alternative or complement to various one-shot decision options, the possibility of sequential decision-making, designed to exploit progressively improved understanding as time goes by.
Combining insights on limitations to foresight (used here as an everyday term) and control, and the choice to at least theoretically rely on one-stage decision-making,
one is led to an approach that first tries carefully to map available decision options as well as possible future developments.
Typically scenarios of some kind (s) play a role in this mapping. Finally a solution, i e. a single or, more typically,
a package of decision options, should be designed such that it, if adopted, can be expected to work reasonably well across the whole identified span of possible future developments.
It is well in line with everyday usage to term such a decision package solution robust.
In the context of one-shot decisions these are flexible options. Such options may be acquired by a one-shot decision
but do require active monitoring and indeed decision-making, however of an operational as opposed to strategic nature to perform their intended functions in the face of uncertainty.
By way of a simple example: In the face of the uncertainty that a fire might break out in one's house at some future point in time,
unless accompanied by the flexibility inherent in a well-trained cadre of fire-fighters. 2. 2. 2. Sequential decision-making and adding adaptive options The fire example is also useful for starting off the discussion on one-shot vs. sequential
(strategic decision-making In the context of that example there is obviously no scope for sequential strategic decision-making in the sense of acquiring fire-protection assets once information on a beginning fire starts coming in 10
Instead any strategic decision-making has to take place well in advance of receiving 9 An example is the Handbook of Systems analysis from the 1980s with only quite cursory remarks on the subject (20, p. 240,21, p. 259f).
On the other hand, the most cited pioneering work on sequential decision-making was published as early as 1968 by Gupta and Rosenhead 22.10 This does not,
of course, rule out that sequential strategic decision-making might be highly relevant to, say, investment planning for fire-fighting. 469 E. A. Eriksson,
By this we mean (in the world of more tangible products and services) decision options that do not in themselves amount to tangible operational assets
A proposed package of decision options resulting from an AP exercise will typically consists of both robust (fixed and flexible) and adaptable parts.
K. M. Weber/Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 462 482 adaptable enough to allow the second-period decision to go for any of the considered visionary structures at reasonable lead-time
and closed process elements in order to bring foresight fully to bear on decision-making. 3. 2. Principles and process of Adaptive foresight Adaptive in Adaptive foresight can be understood usefully in at least three different ways:
and stakeholders Adaptive foresight is designed to help decision-makers develop strategies. You can do a research project usingmany of the ideas from AF,
however, when individual actors need to make up theirminds about their strategies and concrete decisions, such forwardloookin consultations need to be kept internal to the client organisation23
and key decision points to get there. This approach is useful because it helps capture the room for manoeuver available to move towards a collective vision,
and in the best case play an implicit coordinating function for their decision-making. In practice, processes of scenario developments and portfolio analysis will hardly be conducted on a continuous basis
it strengthens the rational basis of decision-making by capturing often implicit assumptions, expectations and underlying values about the future explicitly in different scenario images and corresponding pathways;
I. Kiss, E s. Quade, Guidance for decision, in: H. J. Miser, E s. Quade (Eds. Handbook of Systems analysis, Overview of Uses, Procedures, Applications,
Handbook of Systems analysis, Craft Issues and Procedural Choices, Elsevier/John Wiley, New york, 1988.22 S. K. Gupta, J. Rosenhead, Robustness in sequential investment decisions, Manage.
Nordic and European future-oriented projects in defence, security, energy and transportation, typically with innovation and major investment decisions as important aspects.
we discuss the broader potential of Internet-based decision support tools and participatory workshops in promoting foresight activities within ERA NETS and European coordination tools. 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Decision support; Foresight; European research area; Innovation policy; Networking; Robust Portfolio Modeling Available online at www. sciencedirect. com Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 483 495 Corresponding author.
so that extensive use was made of Internet-based decision support tools (see the consultation process homepage5). More specifically, the consultation processes sought to respond to the general objectives of embedded foresight in the following ways, among others:
as well as by the treatment of research areas and research themes as relevant‘units of analysis'that experts could be assessed with the Internet-based decision support tool.
In the first phase, National Coordinators invited Researchers in their respective countries to submit research issues through the Internet questionnaire. 8 These questionnaires were implemented by using Opinions-Online decision support tool9
Arguably, a rational decision 490 V. Brummer et al.//Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 483 495 maker would not choose a dominated portfolio,
we have discussed the use of decision support methodologies in the development of a shared research agenda inwoodwisdom-Net, an ERA NET on wood material research that is an example of the coordination tools for EU innovation policies.
thus, there is a need for decisions about which 493 V. Brummer et al.//Technological forecasting & Social Change 75 (2008) 483 495 participants will be invited to workshops and in what phases of the process.
selected foresight activities and selected process elements such as decision support for the bottom up thematic prioritization and the formation of new networks may shift the locus of activities closer to national actors.
2005) is Researcher and doctoral student at the Systems analysis Laboratory of Helsinki University of Technology, with research interests in foresight, decision support systems and strategic decision making.
Ahti Salo (M. Sc. 1987, D. Tech. 1992) is Professor at the Systems analysis Laboratory with research interests in decision analysis, decision support systems, technology foresight, and risk management.
but also national research agencies and businesses, in their efforts to cope with the increasing complexity of new technologies and decision environments, in an increased techno-economic competition worldwide 9. Since the 1990s,
and that the potential impacts of decisions can only partially be estimated. In the context of policy-making, the most important intentions of foresight exercises are to find out changes in consumer preferences
the political decision structures and the public administration. Based on the tradition of regulatory impact assessments and foresight exercises, we define regulatory foresight as strategic activity undertaken by governments
The second notion of path is from the perspective of an actor making decisions, developing strategies and taking action.
since there are a number of routes The decision has to be taken, sooner or later, whether to go for a highly application specific product (one purpose only),
Each decision is strategic as it requires investments and expertise on the parts of actors involved
in order to broaden at an early stage the decision making process. The MPM-2 project involved a collective mapping of projected actor strategy paths (or actors'paths-into-the-future) and a reflection on the future socio-technical path or entanglements
enabling some sort of strategic management including decisions whether to deviate from strategies shown or go along with them.
Here it could act as an anticipation and mapping tool guiding decisions what innovation chain to invest in,
Certain developments have led to undesired effects and to a decreasing trust in science, scientists and decision-makers.
The literature suggests that the emerging knowledge societies are also‘risk societies',characterised by decision-making conducted within an environment of increasingly uncertain or incomplete knowledge.
Nevertheless, decisions have to be made. Dealing with uncertainty and partial or incomplete knowledge needs collaboration and the strategic alignment of actors.
Social movements have been gaining increasing importance and gravity in action and decision-making. While active participation is demanded in a‘risk society,
strengthening their communication and collaboration via constructive discussions and joint decision-making. It enables the alignment of all stakeholders'endeavours such that they can influence underlying trends.
when formulating policy recommendations or actual policy decisions. Yet, it is simply not possible to reflect on this diversity in a single paper.
The use of the recommendations e g. strategy formation for a specific university, strategies for the higher education sector in a region, a country or the EU is up to the decision-makers.
which will be shaped partly through deliberate strategies and actions, partly by factors beyond the control of decision-makers. 4,
In that way, these visions can inform present-day decisions, and also show the possibilities to shape our future.
and a responsibility of, decision-makers to act strategically. These different visions for the EU as a whole have strong implications for the ERIA, too.
For an actual foresight process, aimed at assisting decision-making either at the level of universities regional, national or EU (ERIA) policies, a much more refined set of ideal types should be developed, based on a thorough understanding of the main features of existing and hypothetical future universities.
as well as for decision-makers in general, a main advantage can be that major strategic decisions in our case on the overall rationale of the EU policies
the‘small-scale'decisions made every day, without taking into account the‘broader picture'would shape the EU,
national and regional levels) could be to‘simulate'the likely impacts of their decisions, by changing the various‘parameters',e g. the overall rationale of the EU or national policies (i e.‘
while decision-making competences are usually with the national or regional authorities. Thus, the issues of multilevel governance should be analysed,
when strategic decisions are to be made on universities. Further, foresight process aligns the participating actors around emergent agendas, resulting in a coordinated mobilisation of people, resources and actions.
Impact of fta Approaches on Policy and Decision-making, Seville, 28 29,september 2006 available at: http://forera. jrc. es/documents/papers/anchor/Higheredanchorpaper. pdf. 10 G. Dosi, C. Freeman, R. R. Nelson, G. Silverberg, L
Impact of fta Approaches on Policy and Decision-making, Seville, 28 29 september 2006, available at: http://forera. jrc. es/documents/papers/Futures%20of%20universities paper. pdf. 22 Richard R. Nelson, The market economy,
Future-oriented technology analysis Impacts and implications for policy and decision making The unfolding acceleration of global innovation is expected to become the hallmark of the first half of the 21st century.
and decision making to anticipate and shape future developments. The challenge of joining forces to develop more robust future-oriented support to decision making has been addressed in the series of International Seville FTA Conference organized by the Institute of Prospective Technological Studies, one of the Joint research Centers
of the European commission. Building on the success of the 2004 and 2006 events, the third edition of the Conference in October 2008
Impacts and implications for policy and decision making 1, enabled FTA EXPERTS, practitioners, and policy and decision makers to share their ideas
and is geared mostly towards indirect decision support such as agenda-setting and issue framing. The authors analyze the role of scenario planning to prepare public policy-making for the uncertainties
and surprises of future developments and better manage complex decisions involving conflicting societal interests. The paper by Loveridge and Saritas:
Impacts and implications for policy and decision making The 2008 FTA International Seville Conference. Online source:
impact on policy and decision making The 2006 FTA INTERNATIONAL SEVILLE SEMINAR, Technol. Forecast. Soc. Change 75 (4)( 2006) 457 582.
and many strategic decision-making processes to align future R&d priorities and innovation strategies with sustainability goals. He holds a Dr. Tech. and a Lic.
The role of this new method in a context of distributed decision-making and design is presented. 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The role of this new method in a context of distributed decision-making and design is presented. A prospective analysis of new technology fundamentally hinges on the concept of novelty.
Deep uncertainty characterizes many domains of decision-making in science and technology. In particular, under deep uncertainty, there is little agreement or consensus about system structure.
seeking decisions robust under a variety conflicting forces 5. Uncertainty in new design arises in at least two areas 6. Technological design is an inherently uncertain process
and delivered by decision support systems, may contribute to an open innovation paradigm where firms work together as part of an extended technological network 11.
a conceptual basis for uncertainty management in model-based decision support, Integrated Assessment 4 (1)( 2003) 5 17.8 G. S. Altshuller, Creativity as an Exact Science
Due to long life times of infrastructures, strategic decision making has to explicitly consider uncertainties in context conditions,
and tools like modeling tools, real option approaches and decision analysis. However, these approaches are often deficient with regard to addressing the broad range of uncertainties associated with the long planning horizon (more extensively treated in 5). Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1150 1162 Corresponding
we want to build on foresight methods for improving strategic decision making in infrastructures through the method of Regional infrastructure foresight RIF.
Such a methodological framework is likely to depart in style and content from the currently dominant forms of strategic decision making in infrastructure sectors 5. While in conventional approaches
reduction of uncertainties was the guiding principle for structuring the decision problem, we will propose a foresight based approach that allows for considering a maximum range of uncertainties.
Finally, we will also address the issue of sustainability deficits of decisions: how to anticipate and integrate them into the formulation of a long term management strategy for infrastructure development.
Socio-technical regimes create advantages for system development as they tend to reduce the costs of knowledge generation and the political costs of decision making 13.
Given the long life times of most infrastructures, strategic investment decisions will only take place every couple of decades.
As a consequence, these decision making processes are often non-routine, badly structured and complex 15.
Due to the long term horizon of infrastructure decisions, the planning process has to deal with lately increasing uncertainties in different fields.
Following a widely shared definition, foresight aims at improving future-oriented decision making through the early detection and assessment of emerging trends and drivers of change 18.
in order to better prepare today's decisions and anticipate risks of established strategies 24, 25. The elaboration of scenarios supports self-reflection and learning as well as strengthens strategic thinking 26 by challenging individual and organizational worldviews 27.
and its regional context 30.2) Other applications of scenario planning are framed as decision support instruments for the assessment of strategic options:
Basically they explore the ranges of consequences, outcomes and impacts of strategic decisions and corresponding actions.
Xiang and Clarke 29 call them decision scenarios with a focus on means. In corporate contexts, innovation oriented foresight focuses on long term product development strategies or market prospects.
but do embed not explicitly the planning in political decision making processes and are not explicit with regard to different stakeholder preferences 38,42, 44 51.
The proposed process thus follows the model of an analytic deliberative decision making process 54. As a result, these procedures will most likely not provide very specific recommendations which can be implemented directly.
However, strategic decisions are taken in a higher degree of reflexivity and transparency through the explicit consideration of the relevant trade-offs.
and to guide decision making of individual actors if foresight is to have a real impact. We take this proposition as a strong invitation to explicitly specify the organizational and procedural interfaces between the exploratory phase in a strategic planning process
RIF aims at providing an explorative perspective on strategic decision making and adopts an explicit participative stance.
potential interest conflicts and sustainability deficits and utilizing the results in the formal decision making process (Fig. 1). 3. 1. Structuring exploration:
In the recruitment phase, the decision makers commission supported by the process facilitators a core team of approximately half a dozen representatives from the political decision making bodies
uncertainties, trade-offs and decision making The data generated in the workshops and core team sessions are synthesized finally by the core team into a recommendation for strategic planning.
As members from the decision making body have participated in the core team a proper transmission of the facts and arguments gathered throughout the RIF process should be guaranteed 7. 4. Case study Kiesental In the following section,
Strategic decisions are taken by political delegates who rely on advice from their operators, consulting engineers and regional and national regulatory bodies.
In contrast, the industry's stakeholders favor besides low tariffs, additionally low levels of bureaucracy as well as voice and participation in the associations decision board. 4. 4. Exploring the trade-off landscape The virtual future stakeholder groups
a transitory organization would be necessary to implement a stepwise decision process taking place over one or two decades.
the political decision making process approved this plan that first foresees an intensified collaboration of joint human resource management leading to joint ownership of facilities
and incorporated early on in a robust decision procedure able to respond to emerging information (e g. concerning decentralized technologies),
and applied an explorative oriented approach to strategic decision making in infrastructure planning. We argued that due to the long life times of key technical components of these sectors
The affiliations of the core team members in the decision making bodies guaranteed the persistence of the argumentative structure in later stages of the planning process.
After our rich empirical experiences, we believe that a strong explorative perspective can be combined productively with strategic decision making,
In this paper, we argued repeatedly that infrastructure sectors represent a special case for strategic decision making, particularly in the case of OECD countries.
In particular, it was stated by the participants that they faced similar decision problems in other domains of (inter-)communal services.
Pol. 35 (7)( 2006) 1069 1082.15 C. R. Schwenk, The Essence of Strategic decision making, Lexington Books, Lexington, 1988.16 T. A. Larsen, W. Gujer
Change 65 (1)( 2000) 115 123.22 M. Mannermaa, Futures research and social decision making: alternative futures as a case study, Futures 18 (5)( 1986) 658 670.23 L. Börjeson, M. Höjer, K. Dreborg, T. Ekvall, G. Finnveden, Scenario types
combining scenario planning with decision analysis, J. Multi-Criteria Decis. Anal. 8 (1999) 311 321.28 M. P. e Cunha, P. Palma, N. G. da Costa, Fear of foresight:
Pract. 2 (3)( 1989) 307 331.36 S. S. Gezelius, K. Refsgaard, Barriers to rational decision-making in environmental planning, Land use Policy 24 (2
in transdisziplinären Projekten, GAIA 1 (2007) 41 45.56 R. Barré, S&t Foresight as a Collective Learning process In view of Strategic decision making:
A systematic, participatory, future intelligence gathering and medium-to-long-term visionbuilldin process aimed at present-day decisions and mobilising joint action.
sense making and decision making as well as diffusion/acting on environment and interaction with other actors in real world. 1164 R. Koivisto et al./
and strongly linked to corporate decision making. Development of safety and risk analysis in the industrial context stems from nuclear industry, civil and military aviation,
and methods for companies in order to support the decision making related to introducing existing technologies into new markets, development of new technologies for existing markets,
Political decisions are affected by the climate change. In the future, for instance, the need of energy and population migration may be different.
CES project, for example, stresses the operational level risk assessment whereas the INNORISK project's starting point is corporate strategic decision making.
while on the strategic decision making level the autonomous methods are convenient. The analysis of this small amount of project material indicates that systematic risk assessment methods tend to direct the analysis towards instrumental, consensual and exclusive analysis of the future.
The ultimate meaning of this phase is to arrange the knowledge in such a form that it is easy to use in decision making.
but it is expressed not normally in engineer-style descriptions as in Box 1 2. Instrumental vs. informative outcomes o Instrumental outcomes refer to the use of foresight to support the specific foreseen decision making situation,
In addition, business, policy making and the whole broad spectrum of decision making call for future-oriented technology analysis as well as risk assessment. Foresight methods and activities approve the uncertainty linked to the different futures
and to create knowledge to help decision making in defining management strategies concerning the changes the future may cause.
in order to help the corporate decision making. To identify possible future developments, driving forces, emerging technologies, barriers, threats and opportunities related to a broader socio-technoeconnomi system.
To arrange the knowledge in such a format that is easy to use in decision making. Results A report where identified
(c) Ways to account for uncertainty in decision making,(d) Strategies for planning and management of nonlinear systems operating in the chaotic regime,
(e) Ways to improve understanding of psychological factors that lead to irrational decisions (f) Appropriate levels of aggregation in investigation of forecasting problems.
Decision making; Uncertainty; Nonlinear systems; Futures methodology issues 1. Introduction There are many methods and approaches to the study of the future.
and monitoring decisions. Hence, the image of a few bright people, using a few interesting methods to forecast the future,
may be replaced by the image of many people interacting with many combinations of methods to shape the future by blurring the distinctions between research and decision making.
Imagine the potential of brain research in understanding decision making, the possible use of behavioral data from which values may be inferred,
4. Decision making in uncertainty Uncertainty, arising from new and unprecedented events, noise, chance, systemic changes and experimental and observational errors, can never be eliminated completely from the decision making process.
Thus, we and others argue that instead of using forecasting methods to produce single-value deterministic images of the future,
Although some of the methods such as decision analysis, scenarios portfolio theory, or decision trees have proven somewhat helpful in decision making in uncertainty,
the field is still very primitive. The quantitative techniques available to us are not yet capable of quantifying risk in ways other than probability.
Educating people in an organization as to the potentials for the organization can increase the likelihood that better decisions are made
when the normal decision process is impossible. In chaos, things happen quickly. The problem of planning and management of systems operating in the chaotic regime is a frontier of great importance to our field.
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 1064 1069 1067 6. Judgment heuristics People often make irrational decisions.
We ignore probabilities in our decisions. In Tversky's example, Sam is a meek, retiring, helpful, tidy, soft-spoken person.
a better understanding of the mechanics of decision making would be useful. This assumption moves us into the realm of psychology. 7. The assumption of reductionism There is an implicit assumption in some methods of futures research that reducing a problem to its elements improves the forecasts produced by the method.
Do we know the decision rules of the buyers and sellers with any more precision than the market as a whole?
and hopefully improve decisions which incorporate its findings. Thus, these frontiers will serve as important orientation in the elaboration of the second edition of Futures research methodology 2. 1 (CD-ROM) to be published by American Council for the United nations University early in 2005.
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