3 Other examples are immersive decision theatres (offering a virtual environment facility to visualise output of predictive and scenario-based models with the aim to support decision-making (Edsall and Larson
and increasing turbulence in their external environment in order to explore how decision makeer select and use foresight practices and techniques for handling environmental uncertainty.
'4. Probably the most well-known example is the Decision Theatre at Arizona State university, which constitutes a large research infrastructure (www. decisiontheater. org).
Effectiveness of a semi-immersive Decision Theater in understanding and assessing human environment interactions. http://www. cartogis. org/docs/proceedings/2006/edsall larson. pdf (accessed 6 august 2012).
Knight maintained that most business decisions are made in unique contexts that make statistical inference impossible and
Management Decision 43, no. 1: 86 101. Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 04:52 03 december 2014
Uncertainty and quality in science for policy, theory and decision library, Series A: Philosophy and methodology of the social sciences.
and how this affects the decisions of engineers, businesses and governments. It investigates how researchers,
since decisions and activities are framed by intentions and ideas about a future situation. People act not only in reaction to the past (socialisattion or present (roles in a social structure),
but the‘boat'only exists due to the collective decision not to miss it. Such response may be amplified by foresight reports,
Researchers, firms and governments have to make decisions about future products in future markets, about things which,
(and divestment) decisions for Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 789 expanding
A notable corporate-level example has been the decision to withdrawfrom the pharmaceutical industrry Notwithstanding the positive outlook of both demography and demand growth,
Managers at BASF and Daimler could be quite confident about the key decisions they would have to make in the next 20 years or even more
In this context, the key decisions themselves to be tackled by the organisation for future growth were not clear.
The definition of the boundaries of the business serves exactly to fix the key decisions for future growth,
and works as a source of trust as well as of transparency and legitimacy of options and decisions, clarifying the pros
to change in attitudes and behaviours and to joint-up decisions for change in order to steer solutions to emerging challenges through an inclusive approach as well as further experimentation
Foresight can also expose a range of equally likely paths into the future that may permit more insightful decisions to be made by a business.
and inform aspects of these decisions is considerable, but it does not remove the element of judgement
focus on processes and activities planning-Change factors as processes and activities interdependence-Decision based on risk/reward-Integration starts;
comply with speed requirements-Individual learning to comply with functional roles-Information improve decisions-Team learning promoted to improve decision-making
and allow data-sharing stimulus to support decisions-Information based; IT used to build applications centred on processes rather than on functions,
Management Decision 41, no. 8: 782 90. von Zedtwitz, M. 2002. Organizational learning through post-project reviews in R&d.
and reviewing past and present decisions and performance to decide whether or not to be in business (changes needed) according to competitive
Research investment decisions made 10 and 15 years ago are having a direct impact on national security programs today.
Of course, in a final analysis, barriers to entry would be weighted against specific competencies and the people with those competencies in making decisions about
1) the future development options in the context of anticipated and unknown challenges,(2) the past decisions that affect the organisation either explicitly or implicitly,
and (3) the present, in which all the actions and decisions are put into action. It is critical to understand that the unrealised options in the past,
as well as the potential ones in the future, also affect the present decisions. The idea of an anticipatory culture builds on this temporal tension (Figure 1). Therefore,
with strategic watersheds decision moments when the organisation has to visit its fundamentals and ponder whether it is going to continue with business as usual, try modest renovations,
The causality between decisions made and paths realised is not always linear: in other words, it is not always certain that the decisions made
and the paths realised correspond. In fact, it could be suggested that most of the decisions are realised only partially.
Therefore, it is crucial to conceptualise an organisation not as a closed node in the present,
decisions made in the past, and unrealised past options. Organisations navigate, as argued above, in the strategic landscape that increasingly requires specific systemic capacities.
business perspective Network roadmapping Roadmap for developing capacities for a network or a cluster Combination of roadmap knowledge spaces depends on the specific aims of the process Making business decisions on the basis
The aim is to endorse business decisions on the basis of roadmapping. The fourth scope is systemic II
and to foster business decisions based on a novel‘service perspective'formed in the process (Myllyoja, Wessberg, and Pajakkala 2012).
and to come up with related business decisions. The knowledge spaces of the project are summarised in Table 5. In the strategy space,
A tool for making sustainable new product development decisions. Technological forecasting & Social Change 71, no. 1 2: 81 100.
Clear understanding of both sets of factors offers a valuable decision aid to inform successful NEST management.
The variability among NEST situations and possible decision needs calls for the FIP approach to be considered very flexibly.
Responding to grand challenges may require some longer-term investment decisions and commitments. There is a persuasive view that that longer-term thinking
They do not constitute decisions made by Forfa's nor any other organisation involved in the research prioritisation exercise.
B Direct impact (medium) This means that the project results were used directly for decision-making at Ministry level (corresponding decisions could concern the forming of a research agenda, budget allocation, etc..
and use it to make decisions. The context and importance of competitive intelligence is based partly on the resource-based theory,
i e. to guide R&d decisions. In looking at the timeframes associated with CTI, they are of a shorter duration to foresight
and well-reasoned decisions on its main features/elements: its geographical scope, time horizon, themes, methods, participants, budget,
Before making these design‘technical'decisions, four issues seem to be particularly relevant when considering what FTA APPROACHES
The subjectivity and associated ignorance due to the choices and decisions made will increase as the FTA begins to deal with more complex and uncertain issues
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 80 (2013) 379 385 3. Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches FTA is an umbrella term to denote several decision-preparatory tools (technology foresight,
On the other hand, policy-makers and stakeholders will contribute to shaping the future through their decisions and their actions.
During this stage, it is recommended also to include the wider range of stakeholders that will be affected by the consequences of these decisions.
and make decisions whether to invest in it or not, one needs to know the current stage of its technology life cycle (TLC).
in order to estimate future development trends to make informed decisions on whether to invest in it or not.
and to make business decisions. Usually, patent application activity is tracked as a TLC indicator for the S-curve analysis 10,12, 13.
Technology observers can make their R&d investment decision by using the proposed approach. The result shows that NBS is in a growth stage.
Market Manage. 21 (1)( 1992) 23 31.36 E. Hajime, The suitability of technology forecasting/foresight methods for decision systems and strategy:
and policy-making 1 5. The term‘model'refers here to a representation of the most crucial aspects of a system of interest for extracting usable information 6. The term‘decision-making'is used here for the act or process of making strategies or conscious decisions
or the parties to a decision cannot agree on, (1) the appropriate conceptual models which describe the relationships among the key driving forces that shape the long-term future,(
The approach starts from a conceptualization of the decision problem and the identification of the key uncertainties.
Given ignorance about the possible side effects of technologies under development, he argues that one should strive for correctability of decisions, extensive monitoring of effects, and flexibility.
and expected values are used in planning decisions. Also, since the installation of new capacity mostly happens in large chunks,
Other rule induction methods, such as decision tree induction, Classification and Regression Trees (CART) 60, could be applied equally well to this task.
, C. Macharis, P. L. Kunsch, A. Chevalier, M. Schwaniger, Combining multicriteria decision aid and system dynamics for the control of socioeconomic processes.
whose implications for potential decisions may be quite diverse. A single model run drawn from this set provides a computational experiment that reveals how the world would behave
In making policy or planning decisions about complex and uncertain problems, EMA can provide new knowledge,
for decisions can be designed to be robust across the explored range of possible futures. By supporting the systematic exploration of the complete space of combinations of uncertainties,
and socioeconomic uncertainty about fuel prices, investment decisions of suppliers, and load curves. 3. 1. Mineral scarcity The first case explores uncertainties related to the availability of minerals/metals that are crucial for the sustainable development of all developed and developing societies.
and socioeconomic uncertainty about fuel prices, investment decisions of suppliers, and load curves. Various alternative developments for these uncertainties are specified.
The short-term operation involves unit commitment decisions, and price bidding in the electricity market, which are directly related to load dispatching to take place in the market.
The long-term decisions are related to capacity investment and decommissioning, which decisions are expected mainly based on lifetime of the technology used in a generation unit.
A unit at the end of it is lifetime and/or an old unit making loss Table 5 Performance bounds of the static and the adaptive plan.
Generation companies'expansion decisions are driven mainly by profit expectations, and are dependent on forecasts about fuel prices, demand,
and models are being used to support decision-making. Where traditionally, often the uncertainties in the inputs to models are reduced as much as possible,
That is, the systematic exploration of a wide variety of uncertainties produces large datasets that need to be analyzed further using machine learning or data mining techniques in order to extract decision relevant information from it.
Decisions under Severe Uncertainty, 2nd ed. Wiley, New york, 2006.10 E. A. Erikson, K. M. Weber, Adaptive foresight:
and using future scenarios present a window of opportunity to effectively drive decisions?(ii) How can developing
The three questions represent a specific perspective linking action and decision-makingwith issues of (i) emergence,
Developing and using scenarios are professional practices to support significant decisions, and therefore it needs to be more assured of its claims to knowledge (methodology).
Still, it is less obvious how these scenarios can be used for bridging today's decisions with the future images.
being a professional practice to support significant decisions, developing and using scenarios need to be more assured of its claims to knowledge 61.
and using future scenarios present a window of opportunity to effectively drive decisions?;(ii) How can developing
towards a user's guide, Futures 38 (2006) 723 739.51 E. Wollenberg, D. Edmunds, L. Buck, Using scenarios to make decisions about the future:
which involve government officials in making decisions about what companies should do. The result of this has been a portfolio
including the specific subset that consists of conscious human efforts to use the imaginary future for making decisions.
future-intelligence gathering and medium-to-long-term vision-building process aimed at present-day decisions and mobilising joint actions'.
Expertise is used often to support top-down decisions, provide advice and make recommendations. Expert Panels and to some extent Delphi surveys are examples of foresight methods that have a high content of expertise.
Second, Denmark‘s tradition of basing policy decisions on analyses of available knowledge is weak.
a good decision is a decision on which everybody (or at least the key stakeholders) agrees.
Apparently, when the time to make a decision comes closer, other issues and (political) interests start playing a role as well.
They are used not to make decisions about different strategic options. Overall futures research appears to play a role in the early phases of the strategic policy processes, agenda setting and (in part) policy preparation.
Generally speaking, it is difficult to assess the impact of a foresight exercise by making a direct connection with a specific strategic decision.
and skills in the organisation An important barrier with respect to the decision to use foresight methods at all,
regional, and national systems that it is also important for the people making decisions to be involved in the process and feel ownership of its results.
clarifying decisions already taken and, most importantly, showing how elements would fit together within a bigger picture
These would require long-lasting decision processes within the public, the political decision structures, and the public administration.
However, the adoption decision is being postponed because of the associated costs and because of the assumed lack of skills to use the technology.
if needed, to enable one to return to previous steps to refine prior decisions. Therefore, the above combination enhances the potential capability of a firm
the mutual learning process between State and citizens'representatives enabled the development of shared decisions, which resulted in the design of more robust and consistent policies that were aligned with local needs.
and citizens'representatives was converted not directly into input for policy design due to the fact that such decisions required the acceptance of governmental bodies.
this process is critical to increase legitimacy, ownership and transparency of decisions. Hence embedding FTA within the proposed system would enable firms to steer solutions to possible challenges through joint-up decision making and implementation processes.
owne rship and t ran spa ren cy of decisions. FTA PROCESSES le ad t o mu tua l experimen tatio n and le arnin g. Th is increa ses commun icatio n
Ultimately, this process shall lead to increased legitimacy, ownership and transparency of decisions across the value chain.
Management Decision 44 (2006) 1441 1460.2 M. Beer, R. A. Eisenstat, The silent killers of strategy implementation and learning, MIT Sloan Management Review
Annual British Academy of Management Conference, 2008.6 F. Okumus, A framework to implement strategies in organizations, Management Decision 41 (2003) 871 882.7 D c. Hambrick, A a
combining external and internal scenarios to create strategic foresight, Management Decision 43 (2005) 360 381.69 M. J. Epstein,
dynamic capabilities for managing strategic fit, Management Decision 45 (2007) 518 538.71 G. Walker, R. Macdonald, Designing and implementing an HR scorecard, Human Resource
Decker and Ladikas, 2004) Valuing/decision-aiding/economic analyses Cost-benefit analysis, SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) and scorecard analyses (Sripaipan, 2006), analytical hierarchy process, data envelopment analysis, multicriteria decision analyses Combinations Scenario-simulation (gaming),
trend impact analysis Introduction Science and Public policy February 2010 5 Six functions of FTA for policy-making are:
Translate and transfer FTA outputs into policy and decision outcomes. What has been accepted by many FTA practitioners as‘post-foresight,
seeking out alternattiv sources of information and challenging impliici assumptions about the future that underlie today's decisions (UK HSC).
to support strateggi considerations, decisions and actions. In generral this means that the future horizon is divided up into a set of categories that serve as coordinaate (in parallel with the spatial coordinates used by radar
or guide policy decisions. Thus, program impact via policy appears to be the most important macro-objective for foresight.
i e. more comprehensive policy content, more evaluation of policy through debate and higher perception of democratic legitimacy Decisions taken:
or guide policy decisions. So we concluded that achieving program impact via policy appears to be the most important macroobjeectiv for foresight:
Future decisions regarding interventions should use all available information about the disease and possiibl interventions, together with current data from sensors and assays, health clinics, hospitals,
no need to refrigerate Long shelf life Rapid test Gives result rapidly Easy to use in the field Small sample consumption Reliability Individual Information for decision at national level Sharing intellectual property and experience
has proposed a decision model to identify and evaluate an optimum mix of interventions and measures for a specific disease, such as improvements in health infrastructure,
this choice illustrates that decisions are made sometimes at the expense of the user-centred rationale.
At this stage in particular, other factors were considered to be of greater importance to the decision to be taken by the project's industrial partneers These factors included some of the following:
which are linked to the need to achieve coordinated and coherent decisions within and across organisations.
The process of sharing experiences, collective learning and understanding, creation of shared commitmeen to the main decisions to be made
they are willing to participate in decisions which will affect their lives and also claim their rights.
decision-makers mainly those from the government tend to consider themselves confident enough to start making decisions.
156) The idea is thought a-oriented process aiming to make decisions or share perceptions, free from prejudice, cultural influence,
and Grupp 2001) This approach aims to link the present decisions and actions to a strategic perspective, coping with the possibilities of the future for the construction of commitmeent around national priorities for ST&I. 248.
Participatory management structures are recommended highly to allow for‘on the fly'decisions to be made once the exercise starts.
because the uncertainty and compleexit of the environment demanded an approach which offered stakeholders a tool for collective reasoning without the need to definine strategies or elaborate decisions,
Government representatives frequently start making decisions before interpreting the material which was obtained in the first phase of the exercise (informatiio and data gathering),
However, so far, little academic attention has been paid to how decisions are taken and priorities set in Chinese research policy.
however, to how decisions are taken and priorities set in Chinese S&t policy (see, however, the primarily quantitative policy analysis in Liu et al.
A decision on accelerating the progress of S&t was launched in 1995, proposing a national strategy entitled‘strategy of revitalizing the nation through science and education'(kejiao xingguo).
The decision on‘acceleration of progress in S&t'marked a further step towards orienting S&t towards China's social and economic needs
The role of experts, public consultation and debate Once the decision is taken that something should be done,
and 2005 decisions and plans to strengthen the S&t infrastructure, linking investments in S&t to broader societal goals
which decisions are made, thereby resulting in better informed public policies or organisational strategies Provide anticipatory strategic intelligence to innovation system actors,
when products and services based on new technologies are rejected Creating new capabilities Improve decisions by meeting societal expectations
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.
and allow decisions to be shaped within wider settings through new inclusive and participatory governance approaches. With regards to its capacity-building role FTA can contribute to the articulation of strategic visions that can guide search and selection processes,
Ultimately, decisions are still somewhat top-down. With very few exceptions9 the design of or decisions around such programmes neither foster the creation of spaces for experimentation and learning,
nor allow for new knowledge to be developed or diffused as usually, very few actors (usually termed experts) take part in the dialogue or creative process.
strategic politiica decisions, assisted also by the Voluntary Guidelines, the next waves of JPIS have the potential to fully exploit the different roles of fta.
not only for the European Institute of technology's decision on the new KICS to be launched, but also on the design of its first Strategic Innovation Agenda. 10.
The reasons are manifold relating to the need for an even tighter embedding of FTA in policy-making in a fast-changing complex environment as well as to internal drivers for novel forms of future intelligence to support coordinated and coherent decisions within and across organisations.
because they underlie key scoping decisions on scanning emerging issues and thus shape both implicit and explicit expectations that influence scanners and their behaviour.
and the level of coordination needed to achieve coherent decisions adds to this. Institutionalised FTA capacities are required to support this type of coordination.
and the results generated. 3. 1 Scoping the exercise's design A number of important decisions were taken at the outset by ICSU regarding the scope and scale of the exercise.
The outcome of these decisions will have implication for global organisations such as the UN. Models of state sovereignty may be challenged by regional groupings,
The decision to conduct the exercise mostly in-house was with hindsight, probably a mistake, providing too little slack to absorb disruptions such as the departure of the project officer halfway through the exercise.
and communicate the logic of the policy decisions. The third level is sectoral development, with an emphasis particularly on emerging solutions,
Sustainable decisions are supported also by governmmenta regulation and other incentives. 5. 3. Transformation roadmap 5. 3. 1 Drivers.
and that short-term decisions do not contradict longer-term commitments. Temporal co-ordination focuses on how policies work out as they interact with other policies
and that short-term decisions do not contradict longer-term commitmeent(‘dynamic efficiency')Differences in degree of continuity of policy design
decisions on what methods are used and how they are applied, which stakeholders take part and how long the project phase will last.
Informed programmmin decisions necessitate the comprehensive examination of the wider context, building on diverse statistical and policy support databases and the plethora of documentation from different levels of research and innovation systems.
and how this information is transformed into potential emerging issues that can be interesting and useful for decision-and policy-makers.
society or economy in combination with a need for present-day (policy) decisions to prevent, mitigate or stimulate the foreseen impact.
as well as to maintain close interaction between the clients of the analysis (e g. decision/policy-makers) and those undertaking the scanning task.
because they underlie key scoping decisions and thus shape both implicit and explicit expectations that influence scanners and their behaviiour In this paper,
the scoping of a scanning exercise necessitates fundamental methodological decisions that partly demarcaat which signals are likely to appear relevant.
All in all, it is imporrtan to realize that decisions about the definition of units do guide
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