The similarities and development challenges of foresight, Technology analysis (TA) and risk assessment methodologies are discussed in the light of the empirical material gathered from projects performed at VTT.
They all explore plausible forthcoming developments, evaluate their desirability, importance and acceptability, and consider the risks involved.
Foresight exercises, in turn, usually identify the possible future developments, driving forces, emerging technologies, barriers, threats and opportunities related to a broader socio-techno-economic system.
Creating shared understandings among the stakeholders about the possible future developments is also important in each field;
whereas in foresight exercises the positive developments like innovation possibilities has Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1163 1176 Corresponding author.
On the other hand, the development of foresight and technology assessment methodologies is expected to benefit from the experiences of the industrial risk assessment tradition:
Development of an integrated approach that combines the strengths of FTA and risk assessment traditions is not,
Feedback from the international FTA COMMUNITY and cross-border cooperation is needed to direct the development efforts effectively,
development of proactive risk assessment methodologies for different corporate risk management purposes (identiffyin the vulnerability of corporate and process actions, managing the risks in occupational, industrial and environmental safety, managing business risks, etc.),
A paradigm shift and interesting methodological developments are seen for Technology assessment too: TA originally emerged to balance power between the legislative and executive branches of government,
In this way TA can also play a more significant role in pushing the development in a useful or wanted direction. 2. 2 Risk assessment methodologies in industrial safety As noted in the previous Section 2. 1,
but also economical analysis. This section describes the methodological developments of risk assessment in the context of industrial safety,
Development of safety and risk analysis in the industrial context stems from nuclear industry, civil and military aviation,
see also 15) provided the impetus for the development of novel loss prevention actions. The use of risk analysis became a common practice to evaluate the safety of processing,
or foresighting, impact assessment (FIA) currently under development at VTT. In this methodology, the concept of risk iswidened to consider the risks in the innovation processesmay these be either intra-corporate R&dor highly distributed
and cover such areas as investment, communication, trust and general development risks. FIA thus steers the risk assessment to a more anticipatory and proactive direction.
and development challenges To study the integration of FTA and risk assessment some relevant projects were analysed.
Organisations have to consider alternative developments of influence factors gain network thinking and action. They need to focus on strategic thinking
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,
The experiences of the method development in the INNORISK case companies have been positive. Dominating feature in all cases has been that the top management of the companies has been involved actively in the development processes.
One opportunity was selected for more thorough concept development including iterative steps of idea generation and enrichment,
as a result of the method development. 3 3. 3. Climate change adaptation and risk assessment (CES) A joint project concerning the climate change adaptation in Finland
The project aims at assessing the development of the Nordic electricity system for the next 20 30 years.
and holistic processes Foresight activities and methodologies may have benefits that will support the risk analysis methods and activities in the development towards a more holistic approach.
This development is needed especially to manage the new emerging risks, such as those that nanotechnologies, population aging,
as well as future expectations concerning their development, are compared summarised and. In general FTA APPROACH encourages to build new risk analysis techniques
To identify possible future developments, driving forces, emerging technologies, barriers, threats and opportunities related to a broader socio-technoeconnomi system.
expert workshops and interviews Development and future expectations of the approach New approaches like inherent safety and resilience engineering address the complex nature of industrial processes.
, T. Luoma, S. Toivonen, Managing uncertainty in the front end of radical innovation development, Proc. of IAMOT 2007 16th International Conference on Management of Technology, May 13 17,2007, Florida
Managing commercialisation risks in innovation development: linking front end and commercialisation. In: K. R. E. Huizingh, M. Torkkeli, S. Conn and I. Bitran (eds.
No matter the size of the model or the computer that runs it, some developments are beyond current discovery
Along with increasing significance of innovation in socioeconomic development grows the need to utilize future-oriented knowledge in innovation policy-making.
Besides technological development decision-makers need all-inclusive knowledge of future developments of society, economy and impacts of science and technology.
The theoretical framework of the barometer is based on the evolution of economies from industrial development phase to sustainable knowledge society.
Technology barometerwas developed in order tomeasure the scientific technological and socioeconomic state and development level of the nation and formaking related comparative analysis to other nations.
Fromthe start TEK included in the barometer both a comparative study of reference countries, based on indicators of past development,
The instrument describes the long-term development of competencies and resembles economic, industrial and business barometers in its attempt to grasp future developments.
and accordingly future-oriented knowledge shall be interlinked properly to the past development path. In technology barometer this challenge is solved by dividing the exercise first into a comparison of the performance of the Finnish innovation system with selected nations on a basis of available international indicators
and identifies possible areas for development activities in national innovation policy in the future. Both parts are structured in a similar way enabling the linking of ex-post and ex-ante analyses mutually
2. Technology barometer is based on the studies of the dynamic evolution of various development stages of a modern society after the industrialized development stage,
At the same time, it also indicates how effectively the development in question complies with the principles of sustainable development.
The various economic development phases form a context incorporating the significant socioeconomic changes and dynamics into the analysis. The framework enables the structural comparisons of entire economies, their individual industrial sectors, related R&d and innovation intensities,
and the entire economic systems or their sub-systems are in different development phases. Thereby the inclusion of transitional phases of economies to the comparative analyses of economic and innovation systems deepens the understanding of the long-term socioeconomic changes and dynamics.
/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1177 1186 The theoretical framework of technology barometer is based on various economic development stages since the first barometer exercise in 2004.
The indicators of technology barometer are structured correspondingly among different development stages of a modern society, from an information society into a knowledge society and from the knowledge society stage towards a knowledgevaalu society and towards the society fulfilling the requirements of sustainable development.
By indicating these various development stages of society, the technology barometer consists of four components, each containing three indicators (Fig. 1). In the information society,
In addition to the three development phases of a modern society, technology barometer considers sustainable development as a fourth object of analysis,
indicating how effectively the development in question complies with the principles of sustainable development. The indicators of societies fulfilling the requirements of sustainable development are social values, environmental responsibility and environmental systems.
The development of an appropriate content, scope and structure of the technology barometer, as described above, involved a series of expert panels of the TEK, VTT and innovation policy experts.
Developments which have taken already place are depicted in one element based on statistical data. The indicator-based data can be used for the generation of index figures to display the nations'techno-scientific base and level of societal development in comparison with the reference group.
The reference group used in the first three implementation rounds consisted of Denmark, Finland, Germany, Japan, The netherlands, Sweden,
Together these analyses give an all-inclusive understanding of the present state and future perspectives of techno-scientific development of the nation.
and Sweden excel (Fig. 2). This is partly explained by vigorous investments in the development of intellectual capital.
Widespread appreciation of research and technical development among the people, as clearly expressed in the questionnaire survey, ties in with this.
Having reached its 3rd round of implementation it is now possible to see what type of development trends are currently in progress in addition to the key numbers of each individual study.
positive development was observed in entrepreneurship and openness to internationalism. 1180 T. Loikkanen et al.//Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1177 1186 3. 2. Survey study of future visions In addition to indicator-based comparison the technology barometer instrument includes a survey about people's expectations regarding the future development trends.
competence and knowledge generation, knowledge society development, innovative society and sustainable development. The first part sets out the respondent groups'assessments concerning the techno-scientific competence prospects and young people's interest in a number of professions.
which have an impact on research and on societal development in general. The third part examines innovative societies,
According to the results, the Finnish politicians are consistently more optimistic than professional engineers or company executives about the country's techno-economic development.
Identification of knowledge-based commercial ideas requires competence development, in basic technologies and business thinking alike,
and Section 4. 2 discusses further development perspectives of the barometer in the future. 4. 1. Results of barometer support innovation policy-making One of the strategic aims of technology barometer exercise is to provide guidance on technologies and actions
and actual technological development. Political decision-making takes place in an environment characterized by ambiguity of problems and a multitude of conflicting interests between different stakeholders,
while technological development tends to be oriented very mission. Technology barometer aims at a contribution to related national discussion.
may not be unrealistic. 4. 2. Further development The plan is to accomplish and publish technology barometer at appropriate intervals of two or three years.
and will be taken into account also in the further development of the structure and content of technology barometer.
This development naturally raises new research questions and needs new data and novel indicators to be included in the barometer.
In addition, structural development of Finnish universities towardsmoremanagement-oriented entities is underway. All these changes pose newchallenges to indicator
The further development of barometer to respond to the above mentioned challenges is already in process.
Development of comprehensive indicators is time-consuming requiring a fair amount of resources as well as a widespread contact network within the society.
With regard to the development of international comparisons the conclusions for the moment could be that at this stage it is important to let all flowers bloom in this field.
which is currently under the development at VTT. This approach seeks to combine evaluative ex-ante impact assessment
Index (A t. Kearny) Globalization Index (World Markets Research centre) Society Human Development Index (UN) Corruption Perceptions Index (Transparency International) Overall Health
3. 2. Knowledge society development 3. 2. 1. Investment in research and product development 3. 2. 2. Information and communication technologies ICT expenditure The use of information
. Young people's interest in certain professions 4. 3. Knowledge society development 4. 3. 1. Opinions regarding the standard of research and technical development in Finland 4. 3. 2
4. 4. Innovative society 4. 4. 1. Investments and entrepreneurial activeness 4. 4. 2. Potential effects of the development of technology on the quality of life 4. 5
development Knowledge society development Innovative society Sustainable development 1185 T. Loikkanen et al.//Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1177 1186 References 1 M. Nardo, M. Saisana, A. Saltelli, S. Tarantola, A. Hoffman, E. Giovannini, Handbook
subtitle Implementation and Further development of a Foresight process, was conducted by a consortium comprising the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation research (Fraunhofer ISI) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering (Fraunhofer IAO).
It took into account the developments at the national as well as the international level. As there is not one single methodology that can be used as in an input output model
latest developments in various technological-scientific subject areas were analysed, consolidated and processed in order to attain a reliable description of the international state-of-the-art.
For the monitoring process, an international panel of well-known and acknowledged experts who have an overview in their fields were asked about the current state and new developments in research and technology.
These topics should still be in the research or development phase during this time. Topics that will already be in the implementation phase during the next years,
As an input to the first workshop in November 2007, a first set of scientific papers describing the developments in the fields were written
7. Health research and medicine 8. Infrastructure technology, urbanisation and environmental development 9. Environmental protection technology and sustainable development 10.
and new developments in science and technology or long-term research questions were described at these crossroads. These crosscutting areas were additional starting points for searches.
new drivers like lifestyles or developments in society change the time and space patterns of living and working.
time is the limiting factor in different developments. Therefore, research on time efficiency, parallel structures, a new kind of precise and ultra-short time measuring as well as 4 D precision (for imaging etc.
How does it fit into the recent developments in Foresight methodology, such as the concepts of adaptive and Embedded foresight,
and how does expected the impact relate to these conceptual developments? Direct outputs in the sense of deliverables were three reports to BMBF as well as a scientific report at the end of the whole process.
Technologie (Federal Ministry for Research and Technology, BMFT (Ed.),Deutscher Delphi-Bericht zur Entwicklung von Wissenschaft und Technik (German Delphi Report on the Development
Future-oriented technology analysis, Strategic intelligence for an Innovative economy, Springer, Berlin, 2008, pp. 71 87.23 F. Scapolo, A l. Porter, New methodological developments in FTA, in:
As a field of policy action it is characterized by a high degree of problem complexity and uncertainty about long-term future developments.
3. Policy measure development, i e. to check for the strengths and weaknesses of different problem-solving strategies, make a final selection
and plot them on two axes to structure the subsequent development of four diverging scenario stories.
another study suggests that standard scenario approaches tend to systematically exclude surprising or paradoxical developments as inconsistent or logical impossible.
A comparison of five public sector scenario exercises addressing regional development concludes that there is little difference in the actual day-to-day work of developing scenarios between public and private sector applications 23.
setting out the range of strategic alternatives that were considered as part of the early development of the NPF,
A combination of skills development, capacity-building, undertaking evaluation more regularly, as well as making better use of existing knowledge
their development and use, Sub-report 2. 1b of Synthesis and Assessment Product 2. 1 by the U s. Climate change Science Program and the Subcommittee on Global Change Research, Department of energy
lessons from regional projects, Development 47 (4)( 2004) 62 72.24 M. B. A. van Asselt, Perspectives on Uncertainty and Risk:
Such processes will contribute to the development of more socially and environmentally responsive nano artifacts. 2009 Published by Elsevier Inc. Keywords:
the disabled and many others Financial institutions of all kinds Consumer organisations and consumers Regional development Agencies and Local government Elected representatives from all levels The art world including language, music,
as it lies at the heart of Foresight Environment of knowledge development: 7. Trust between organisers and all participants, even among those whose opinions may not be deemed to be‘influential'8. Establishment of a new balance between participants with special expertise
but have been modified here to be appropriate to the development of a metaphor for Inclusive foresight. There are some obvious linkages to behavioural matters.
and codification of the research and technological development needed for the creation of desirable artifacts. There are parallels here with the events that surrounded the success of gene-splicing in the early 1970s.
Precaution Inclusiveness though not in the sense used in this paper Integrity Better and constant vigilance to assess developments
Such process will contribute to the development of more socially and environmentally responsive nano artifacts. Acknowledgements The authors wish to thank Denis Loveridge and Penny Street,
with the pleasures of external things, is necessary before the less visible attractions of inner development become attractive.
Creating, Using and Manipulating Scientific knowledge for Public policy, Edinburgh University Press, 1993.6 J. Stiles, Neural plasticity and cognitive development, Developmental Neuropsychology 18 (2)( 2000) 237 272.7 D
An application to prospecting futures of the responsible development of nanotechnology Douglas K. R. Robinson STEPS, University of Twente, Enschede, The netherlands a r t i c l e i n
At present, during its early stages, a wide variety of actors are anticipating both on the potential benefits and risks of the development of nanotechnologies and their embedment into markets and into society.
and develop appropriate governance strategies for nanotechnologies need to consider both thewide spectrumof nanotechnology research and development lines,
Co-evolutionary scenarios Selection environment Nanotechnology Responsible development Anticipatory coordination 1. Introduction The path to innovation is journey-like, certainly so for radical innovation.
In the field of nanotechnology these challenges are compounded further due to the early stage of nano developments
& Social Change 1. 1. Anticipatory coordination for the responsible development of nanotechnology These general challenges become very specific in the case of nanoscience and nanotechnology.
There is a call for anticipatory governance 1 often phrased as the need for responsible development of nanotechnology or responsible innovation in nanotechnology,
(or are in the process of being formed to shape possible new configurations of roles and responsibilities in the development of nanotechnology.
encompassing the notions of responsible development, responsible innovation and including the notion that this umbrella term covers research, product development and embedment.
or another with an emphasis on responsible up to and including halting developments along particular R&d
but that this landscape is shaped actively in response to anticipations on development and impact of the novelties.
and thus potentially breaking up existing orders to some extent, subsequent developments create new patterns that may lead to stable situations.
Paths and other stable patterns enabling and constraining actions and views, will shape further development. Thus, they span up an endogenous future.
Further developments are predicated on the pattern of the present situation. Not in a deterministic way: there are always choices and contingencies.
Ideas of responsible development of nanotechnology have been in circulation for a while now, but by the end of 2007 they were solidifying into policy and regulation.
For a detailed account of the developments of the nano risk debate and the key elements of RRI see van Amerom and Rip 35 and Kearnes and Rip 36.
This is possible because there are emerging irreversibilities in ongoing socio-technical developments, based on shared agendas, mutual dependencies and network ties there is an endogenous future 11.
and colleagues into a way of framing various ways of assessing technical novelty and its development.
Scenarios are used not anymore to extrapolate particular developments into the future but rather, to enhance the reflexivity of actors regarding strategic decisions
which can modulate these developments, and larger lock ins (irreversibilities) which constrain such actions and impact on unforeseen or sub-optimal trajectories of socio-technical developments.
This reflexivity allows for a trying out of different possible paths, and this actor learning is captured in the term complexity.
or another with an emphasis on responsible up to and including halting developments along particular R&d lines.
This shows the status of the IC+game board at the time of the workshop and was the starting point for the development of realistically complex scenarios.
Conceptual development of this multilevel perspective has been explored elsewhere 2. Box 2 Scenario 1 summary. The nano umbrella term becomes more specific (in funding mechanisms) now defined in terms of potential sectors that will be impacted by R&d lines.
Ad hoc public engagement exercises act as a lubricant to continue nanotechnology developments across the board. However, one project in particular captures people's attention,
Rapid developments in nano means the consequent burgeoning number of delivery methods leads to increasingly bewildering regulatory protocols.
but confidentiality of development hampers transparency (issues of competition) and thus watchdogs find it difficult to access data to assess practices.
where researchers were anticipating that the EU responsible development code may affect funding..The codes are particularly enabling for medical devices,
Similar developments can be seen for crime scene investigation and civil security technologies, where advanced diagnostics,
in Finland, sunken investments enable further development (but create constraints later on in the scenario). Focused investments included nanofiltration (for effluent treatment), nanocoatings (for pigment and texture) and nanodiagnostics (for monitoring quality) and nanocharacterisation (for deeper understanding of paper materials.
and developments in nanotechnology for the paper sector Lock in as path enabling: other governments look on with envy at the focus of Finnish nanotechnology.
Other national governments look with envy at the rapidity of developments of the targeted nano programmes of Finland.
5. 1. 2009 2010 nano development boom The self-imposed standards for manufacture work as a minimum safety requirement,
but have little effect because of the lock in enabling technology development but constraining comparative selector input..Some issues of workers safety voiced but related to non-nano issues
& Social Change 76 (2009) 1222-1239 aimed at temporary governance of developments are expected to reduce pressure on regulators so not supplanting regulation but inhibiting it all the same (regardless of good intentions).
Here they show that the patterns that were becoming stabilized by 2007 (identified through exploring endogenous futures) continue to shape development
Change 75 (2008) 517 538.7 A. Rip, J. Schot, Identifying loci for influencing the dynamics of technological development, in:
Paper Series, Working Paper#08.19,2009. 18 H. van Lente, Promising Technology The Dynamics of Expectations in Technological developments.
Policy 6 (1)( 1977). 21 H. van Lente, A. Rip, Expectations in technological developments: an example of prospective structures to be filled in by agency, in:
(and used) for transition policy. 4 15 Used for open-ended roadmapping by technology developers at early stages of development 6. 16 Used for exploring industrial/sectorial alignment/misalignments. 17 See Haico
through methodology and application development and is about to be submitted at the time of publication of this article.
which was driven by the recognition that Finland is strongly dependent on global developments. The objective of encouraging other actors of the R&i system to initiate foresight activities has lead to many spinoof activities,
Research and innovation councils and programmes play a significant role in the development of science and are a central interface between politics and research.
a significant difference between today's knowledge-based economies and the industrial economies of 30 or 50 years ago is that technological development has become crucial for economic development
Modern societies have a strategic interest in research and technological development, and governments have an interest in the overall priorities of national expenditure on these areas.
Sociologists have noted this development, highlighting how modern knowledge production has changed from its classical form (Mode 1),
and industrial development, ending up in new products introduced on to the market. As a consequence of this, there is often focus on the opinions of so-called‘elite'scientists and industrialists,
and the development of generic technologies, become determined by generic market structure of global research and technology.
The context is not related to any particular understanding of science or technological development but to powers and political interests in the affected areas of science and technology;
and technological development are unpredictable; in this sense it is almost a Mode 1 understanding of science and technology;
It is difficult to obtain comparable statistics for research council funding activities on the scale of the European union (EU) or countries of the Organisation for Economic cooperation and Development (OECD). In Denmark,
Through this, they contribute to change and the development of newdirections for research institutions and for the research community in general.
thus play a central role in some cases a key role in the broader strategies and developments of science and research systems.
The development of this plan was not a formal, structured process, but consisted of three main phases:(
1) Development of vision papers;(2) Definition of strategic areas; and (3) Elaboration of the communication format.
were asked to write papers about their vision of developments in their research areas, to be used as input to the strategy process.
The third phase in the development of the Strategy plan 2003 2007 was more important to the end product than was suggested by the term communication format.
the PR company and the authors of the vision papers only a few other persons were involved directly in the development of the Strategy plan 2003 2007.
The core group for the strategy development processes, apart from the programme-management staff in the Energy Authority, consisted of representatives from the planning and development departments of the two electricity grid operators.
However, the development of strategy between these programmes also implied that there was room for activities other than those defined in the strategy plan.
Inducement and blocking mechanisms in the development of a new industry: the case of renewable energy technology in Sweden.
These developments were followed up in 2003 by the establishment of the University of Luxembourg (UL.
Just as significant as all the developments set out in Box 1 is the establishment of the FNR.
the FNR serves as Luxembourg's national funding agency in supporting the development of research competences in topics of national interest Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:09 03 december 2014 936 F. Glod et al. through multi
but will also steer them to conduct more leading-edge research in topic areas that are likely to be important for Luxembourg's future socioeconnomi development.
But in small countries, this is particularly difficult to achieve across the board as many S&t areas lack sufficient‘critical mass'to keep pace with all the latest developments.
In addition to the contribbutio a particular thematic area might make to scientific understanding, socioeconomic development, etc. a further important factor to bear in mind
To assist the development of outstanding centres of science and technology excellence in Luxembourg; To ensure the specialisation of public research centre facilities into centres with a limited number of specific areas of high level expertise;
National priorities National priorities (Research areas)( Research domains) Innovation in services Business service design and innovation Fostering the economic and legal environment for Innovation performance and development of the financial systems
uses and sources of energy Sustainable agro-systems management Spatial and urban development Identities, diversity and integration Identities, diversity and integration Labour market, educational requirements
This of course begs the question of what other instruments might support the wider development of this particular topic and of the domain priorities as a whole.
which will help to sustain the development in the domains identified. Furthermore some of the public research centres have conducted their own mini-foresight studies,
moreover, they often raised parallel structural developments when discussing thematic priorities in theirworking groups. Nevertheless, the exercise's compartmentalisation almost certainly weakened its potential to directly inform developments in other parts of the research system.
This is also related to the issue as to whether the exercise was intended to set FNR or national priorities.
owing to a lack of common vision among the various stakeholders on the position and contribution of S&t to Luxembourg's socioeconomic development. 7. 2. Setting the‘granularity'of priorities The priorities identified by the exercise were set at a level
first, the already-mentioned lack of vision of the role of S&t in Luxembourg's development meant that some of the criteria were used rather blindly.
and it relied solely on the exercise for the development of its new thematic programmes.
and their methodology had to be adapted to the degree of progress made up to that point. 8. Other elements included the review analysis by the OECD on Luxembourg's public research apparatus, the multiannnua development programmes of the public research centres and the University of Luxembourg,
and the economic development priorities in the various sectors of the economy. 9. The rationale for presenting EWS participants with a list of‘ready-made'research domains was to prevent discussions starting from scratch.
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