The key point here is that novelties do not traverse a static landscape made up of various selection environments (such as regulations, markets, policy etc.
but by the end of 2007 they were solidifying into policy and regulation. Thus, there was an occasion to launch a technology assessment exercise,
1) Instrumental motivations legitimising R&d activities as a policy to ensure that technology is held not back by public skepticism;(
entanglements due to sunk investments (Finnish policy), collective decision on technology developer side for soft law, etc.
Shaping technology, Guiding Policy: Concepts, Spaces and Tools, Cheltenham (UK), Northampton (MA, USA), Edward Elgar, 2002.5 A. H. van de ven, D. E. Polley, R. Garud, S. Venkataraman
Shaping technology, Guiding Policy; Concepts, Spaces and Tools, Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2002.8 J. Schot, A. Rip, The past and future of constructive technology assessment, Technol.
Policy 28 (1999) 777 792.17 S. Bakker, H. van Lente, M. Meeus, Arenas of expectations for hydrogen technologies, Innovation studies Utrecht (ISU) Working
Policy 11 (3)( 1982) 147 162.20 R. R. Nelson, S g. Winter, In search of useful theory of innovation, Res.
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:
Policy 31 (6)( 2002) 935 946.25 C. Freeman, C. Perez, Structural crises of adjustment: business cycles and investment behaviour, 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
Policy 36 (2007) 871 879.41 A. Nordmann, If and then: a critique of speculative nanoethics, Nanoethics 1 (2007) 31 46.
http://www. tandfonline. com/loi/ctas20 Impacts and implications of futureorieente technology analysis for policy and decision making Ozcan Saritas, Cristiano Cagnin, Attila Havas & Ian Miles
Ozcan Saritas, Cristiano Cagnin, Attila Havas & Ian Miles (2009) Impacts and implications of future-oriented technology analysis for policy and decision making, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 21:8, 915-916, DOI:
8 november 2009,915 916 EDITORIAL Impacts and implications of future-oriented technology analysis for policy and decision making*Most of the papers in this special issue were presented at the Third International Seville Conference on Future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) that took place in October 2008.
and policy and governance impacts with discussions and demonstrations at the regional and corporate levels.
Weber et al. discusses the trade-offs between policy impacts of FTA with the experience gained from the innovation policy foresight
The paper gives a comprehensive review of the foresight and the assessment of its impacts on policy.
medium-term and long-term success of policy translation may vary. The case analysis indicates that the outputs
and outcomes of the foresight and strategy process were translated successfully into policy decisions immediately after the exercise.
10.1080/09537320903262272 http://www. informaworld. com Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:08 03 december 2014 916 Editorial authors conclude that the short-term success of the policy impact was at the expense of mediumtt long-term impact
what policy developments have taken place after to the publication of foresight results. The exercise has identified through its panels about 6 10 focal competence areas and, for each of these,
and the analysis portrayed in this paper is instructive for the planning of large-scale foresight exercises that need to serve high-level policy objectives subject to demanding time constraints and expectations.
offer a clear insight that smarter policy and corporate decision-making processes are needed to deal with recent crisis and the threat of discruptive changes.
Smart decision making linked to the ability to innovate calls for the anticipation and exploration of future directions through a societal debate within policy making,
Ozcan Saritas, Cristiano Cagnin, Attila Havas and Ian Miles Note 1. Reflecting the 2008 FTA Conference emphasis on impacts and implications of FTA for policy and decision making
2) The use and impact of fta for policy and decision making;(3) FTA in research and innovation;(
Analysing and improving the impact of foresight exercises in policy and decision-making are two key issues in the field of foresight studies.
Furthermore, policies on innovation have been suggested by Johnson and Jacobsson to underpin the system by improving its ability to serve five primary functions:(
Most foresight practice in Europe has been focussed on public policy making and especially policy making in science and technology
Some authors have suggested that foresight has emerged from the convergence of the three disciplines and practices of policy development, strategic planning and futures studies (Gavigan et al. 2001),
The programme and its strategies are coordinated with general national energy polices and often also with other policy areas;
The selection of areas basically reflected Danish energy policy and its focus on environmentally friendly energyproduuctio technologies,
a policy also reflected in the overall aims of the PSO R&d programme. The selection of only four priority areas resulted in a stronger and narrower technology focus than the broader priority areas of the Energy research programme's earlier strategies.
and through governmental policy. 3. 5. Summary The two case studies described here represent two quite different sets of circumstances.
For the Danish energy research programme the rationale was to set priorities for Danish energy research and innovation in the light of Danish energy policy.
The Energy research programme refers to targets and their horizons in the Government's energy policy: 2030 and the Kyoto Protocol's timeframe of 2008 2012.
First, foresight exercises that take national policies into account as a boundary condition are easier to implement than those challenging national policies.
in situations where national policies are to be challenged, the process needs to include decision-makers at the national policy level government,
politicians and key civil servants at least if implementing the results is important. Of course, awareness rising or advocacy might also be the reasons behind foresight exercises,
but the process should also be designed to include thoughts about the‘policy toolbox'in the process itself.
In an opening section, the general contours of science, technology and innovation (STI) policy in Luxembourg are traced, with a view to contextualising the FNR Foresight experience.
while a final section draws some summary conclusions and highlights lessons for future foresight practice. 2. STI Policy in Luxembourg Before the 1980s,
Accordingly, the government went on to develop a focused STI policy, which began with the establishment of several new institutions,
the Ministry of Culture, Higher education and Research (MCHER) as the key policy centre with respect to Luxembourg research;
including the policy (government) level, the strategic research funding agency) level and the operational (research performing institutes) level (OECD 1991).
a desire to identify topic areas sufficiently focused as to yield specific policy implications, and on the other hand, a need to avoid generating an inordinately long list of S&t topic areas requiring excessive amounts of effort to appraise.
'since future investments in research infrastructures or future changes in policies/regulations, for example, can make a significant difference to a country's ability to exploit a particular S&t thematic area.
to manage expectations of (policy) impacts; to identify and mobilise champions to drive the process forward
but is also responsible for setting policy across the whole of the research system. Finally, there is the research community,
'In a coordinated approach with other elements8 of public policy, FNR Foresight was to provide the basis:
ICT Infrastructure Telecoms Voip Social & human sciences Economy, policies, institutional framework Economy and finance Dynamics of financial wealth creation Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:09 03 december
Picking up on the OECD distinction between different levels of priorities (i e. policy, strategic and operational), the MCHER should have been interested naturally in Level 2 of the schema research areas.
Instead, a better STI policy strategy is to foster an innovation system that is sufficiently flexible to support such areas at their time of emergence. 5. 3. Deliberative processes Foresight exercises are characterised by deliberation between various stakeholders, often in workshhop and working groups.
or micro-countries that there is‘compacting'of policy levels together with the‘many hats syndrome
the expectation was that MCHER would use the results to inform a wide array of policies beyond the formulation of new FNR programmes.
which recommended a clearer distinction between policy formulation (the preserve of the MCHER and other ministrries and policy implementation (reserved for agencies such as FNR and Luxinnovation).
As previously highlighted, such decoupling of the foresight process from centres of policy formulattionimplementation is not unusual,
but the risk associated with this is loss of some sense of ownership. 7. 6. Mistakes were made,
Science and Public policy 35, no. 5: 361 71. OECD. 1991. Choosing priorities in science and technology.
Science and Public policy 27, no. 6: 433 42. Wehrmeyer, W.,J. Chenoweth, A. Clayton, M. Fernandez-Lopez,
http://www. tandfonline. com/loi/ctas20 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis: experiences from the innovation policy foresight and strategy process of the City of Vienna K. Matthias Weber a, Klaus Kubeczko a, Alexander Kaufmann a & Barbara Grunewald a a Austrian Institute of technology, Department Foresight
and Policy development, Vienna, Austria Published online: 12 oct 2009. To cite this article: K. Matthias Weber, Klaus Kubeczko, Alexander Kaufmann & Barbara Grunewald (2009) Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis:
experiences from the innovation policy foresight and strategy process of the City of Vienna, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 21:8, 953-969, DOI:
8 november 2009,953 969 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis: experiences from the innovation policy foresight and strategy process of the City of Vienna K. Matthiasweber*,Klaus Kubeczko, Alexander Kaufmann and Barbara Grunewald Austrian Institute of technology, Department Foresight and Policy development, Vienna
, Austria In 2006 the City ofvienna launched a foresight and strategy process to revisit its urban research and innovation policy.
This process undoubtedly had a major impact on policy; in fact, several of the recommendations of the process were translated immediately into policy decisions,
others are planned to be implemented in the years to Come in spite of this apparent success, a more critical and systematic assessment of the process shows that the apparent short-term success of the process seems to come at the cost of limited medium-to long-term impact, associated with a low degree of novelty and the avoidance of controversy.
The impact assessment is based on a framework that focuses on three key functions of foresight in relation to policy making:
and facilitating policy making at short-,medium-and longteerm Obviously, only the short-term impact assessment can rely on empirical observations,
The reasons for success in terms of shortteer policy impacts will be highlighted but also the factors that seem to hamper mediumaan long-term impacts from arising.
policy impact 1. Introduction In 2006, the City of Vienna initiated a far-reaching and open strategy process on the orientation of its future research, technology and innovation (RTI) policy.
10.1080/09537320903262314 http://www. informaworld. com Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 954 K. M. Weber et al. municipal RTI policy actions until the year 2015.
and still has on policy and decision making, at least as far as short-term impacts are concerned. However, in this paper, we would like to take a more systematic look at the impacts the process already has had
and its key characteristtics The concluding section will synthesise some of the most interesting insights that could be gained from the experience of the project. 2. Framework for the impact assessment of foresight processes1 2. 1. Changing insights into processes of innovation and policy making
government policies in relation to research and technology had predominantly been inspired by an approach that today is labelled often as‘picking winners':
In line with these concepts, the 1990s were also characterised by a great reluctance of government policy to prioritise research themes and select technologies in a top down manner.
However, the growing complexity of innovation processes is recognised also by stressing the bottom up Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 955 component of networking
Similar to this shift in approaches to innovation processes, there has been a shift in the conceptual understanding of policy processes.
Taking into account insights from strategic planning and complle social systems thinking, policy studies are stressing the growing importance of interactions,
Initially, the prevailing technocratic and linear process models of policy making (e g. in terms of formulation implementation evaluatiio phases) were replaced by cycle models,
where evaluations are supposed to feed back into the policy formation and implementation phases. Already in these cycle models, policy learning is seen as an essential ingredient of political governance.
However, in viewof the complexity and the ever-changing character of the object of policy which strongly applies in the case of innovation policy it is recognised now widely that there is neither a clear-cut recipe for nor an overarching theory of policy making (OECD 2005.
From a different angle, we should acknowledge a fervent need for continuous adaptation and readjustment of policies and related instruments (Carlsson, Elg, and Jacobsson 2006.
More recently, it has been recognised that the effectiveness of policy depends also on the involvement of a broader range of actors than those formally in charge of policy decisions.
The concept of distributed policy making and intelligence (Kuhlmann 2001; Smith 2002) draws our attention to various policy practices relying extensively on the knowledge, experience and competence of the different stakeholders concerned.
From this network perspective, policy making is not just about government, but about the joint impact of public and private decision making on society's course of change and the interactions that precede formal decision making.
For government policy to be effective, this implies a need for participation of stakeholders. Further, the role of government is shifting from being a central steering entity to that of a moderator of collective decision-making processes.
With such an open and distributed model of policy making in mind it is recognised now increasingly that an opening of political processes is necessary to ensure the robustness and the effectiveness of its outcomes.
This is also reflected in the EC's White paper on Governance (EC 2001) which stresses five principles of good governance:
participation, accountability, openness, effectiveness, coherence. 2. 2. Foresight in support of policy strategy formation The aforementioned shift in conceiving of policy-making processes is reflected in the evolving practices of foresight.
Foresight processes bring together not only experts, but also decision makers from research, industry, policy making and society. Thus, a shared understanding of problems, goals and development options can be expected to emerge among those actors that have an important role to play in shaping the future.
This converging understanding of the issues at play is likely to contribute to an improved coherence of the distributed decisions of these actors
From this perspective, foresight can be interpreted as an integral element of networked and distributed policy making by providing three crucial functions (Da Costa et al. 2008;
1) Policy informing by generating consolidated findings concerning the dynamics of change, future challenges and options and transmitting it to policy makers as an input into policy conceptualisation and design.
2) Policy strategic counselling by merging the insights generated in the context of policy informiin foresight activities with perspectives on the strategic positioning
3) Policy facilitating by building a common awareness of current dynamics and future developmment as well as new networks and visions among stakeholders,
thus facilitating the implementation of policies. 2. 3. An assessment framework for foresight processes in support of policy making Against this background,
it is now possible to summarise the potential policy impacts of foresight by drawing first of all on the three main functions of foresight in relation to policy-making processes,
Simultaneously, several Austrian regions have initiated or reinforced their RTI policies. Vienna already launched an active RTI policy in the early 1990s;
almost twenty years later the city is confronted with the necessity to revisit its RTI policy landscape.
At the same time, new challenges were identified that have to be tackled in order to keep pace with the international developments in science, technology and innovation,
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 957 Table 1. A Framework to classify the impacts of foresight activities.
and objectives explicit Intermediate Devising recommendations and identifying options for action Activating and supporting fast policy learning and policy unlearning processes Identify hidden obstacles to the introduction of more informed,
in strategies and policy programmes) Incorporating forward-looking elements in organisations'internal procedures Facilitating Immediate Effective actions taken Intermediate Formation of action networks Creation of follow-up activities Ultimate
Adoption of foresight contents in the research and teaching agenda of organisations as well as in various disciplinary matters Improved coherence of policies Cultural changes towards longer
where RTI policy was spread across several administrative branches, with little coordination between them. These conditions, together with the pronounced consensus-orientation in policy making, provide the governance context in which the foresight
and strategy process was positioned. 3. 1.‘Systems Research in the Urban area':'groundwork for RTI policy The strategy process could draw on solid grounds.
In addition to a number of specific studies, it built specifically on the results of the large-scale research programme‘Systems Research in the Urban area'that provided the analytical groundwork
and took first exploratory steps towards identifying future challenges for the RTI policy of the City of Vienna. 4 The research programme was implemented as a joint undertaking by the City of Vienna and Austrian Research centres.
Initiatives in this urban policy area were expected to contribute to enhancing the competitiveness of firms in the city,
which served as a backdrop for later elaborating elements of an RTI policy strategy for the city of Vienna.
and his engagement must be seen as decisive for realising a participatoor process in a context that had been characterised until then by strong departmentalisation of policy making.
'Over the following 12 months, a broad participative debate on RTI policy strategies for the city was conducted.
and vision for municipal RTI policiie by both identifying areas for action and implementing adequate policy measures until the year 2015.
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 959 Panel 1 FTI in business Integrative concept for RTI-strategy Panel
-policy in Vienna Panel report Opening Final event Figure 1. Process overview‘Wien denkt Zukunft'.
'Each of the panels was chaired by a leading actor in urban RTI policy, coming either from a municipal department in charge of research agendas or from a public research funding agency in charge of research agendas,
in order to ensure the ownership and link with policy initiatives. In other words, while on the one hand these four themes mirrored major concerns of the city in relation to research and innovation, they also mirrored the main competencies and institutions by
It gave the key policy actors a clear and visible place in the process thus reducing the risk of counterproductive interference.
3) EU-policy;(4) Networking. These four crosscutting topics were regarded also as crucial for the future,
and policy fields covered by the respective panels was sought. As secondary criteria gender and age balance were considered.
i e. a very direct link between the panel results and the official policy was established. In this final phase, the role of the Municipal Department for EU Strategy and Economic development (MA 27) that was in charge of coordinating the entire foresight
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 961 4. Objectives,
and objectives for optimising the process of research and innovation with the help of RTI policy measures as available to the City of Vienna and embedded in the other policy levels (national and European) exerting an influence on the research and innovation scene
therti process‘Wien denkt Zukunft'identified five key fields for action on which the City of Vienna will concentrate its future RTI policy (see Figure 2):(1) Human resources
between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 963 life sciences, information technologies and the creative industries) will be promoted actively. A first call in this new area was launched in the first half of 2008, focusing on Arts&sciences.
3) In revising the City of Vienna business promotion principles‘ZIT 08plus'more attention will be given to crosscutting issues of RTI policies,
In terms of its informing function, it certainly contributed to giving research and innovation more prominence and visibility in the context of urban policy.
The relevance and crosscutting nature for many other policy areas became apparent and contributed to raising the awareness of science,
In terms of the policy-facilitating function of foresight, a number of concrete and effective actions were taken
the innovation policy strategy has certainly become a point of reference for many new policy initiatives. Reference is made regularly to the strategy to lend legitimacy to new initiatives and document their compatibility.
and acknowledged as a key policy document. With the official support lent to the strategy by all relevant city councillors
While the process can be interpreted as a first step of joint policy learning, it will be one of the great challenges of the following years
whether and how the results of the monitoring will be processed further to adapt strategy and policy accordingly.
and Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 965 boundary-crossing initiatives are difficult to realise.
and policy level for such boundary-crossing initiatives, or as an even more radical change a less hierarchical governance approach in general,
The foresight and strategy process also fulfilled policy facilitating functions, but mainly with respect to the activities internal to the city government and public administration, where the strateeg indeed serves as a major reference point.
whether the process of strategic dialogue and policy learning can be turned into a sustainable activity or not,
Identifying‘new'actors is less the key point than integrating the known actors (e g. from neighbouring policy areas) into the debates about research and innovation.
although adjustments are of course likely in view of the growing prominence of RTI on the city's policy agenda.
Also with respect to the coherence of policies, more fundamental changes would probably be needed to reduce organisational barriers.
and strategy process‘Wien denkt Zukunft'had a number of clearly identifiable impacts on policy agendas and initiatives.
and innovation policy to the forefront of policy attention and that brought together representatives from most relevant policy areas.
However, this apparent success in terms of immediate policy impact came at a price. First of all, the degree of novelty and creativity that was enabled by the design of the process was limited.
To this is added the strong consensusorienntatio and the closeness to top-level policy making. By being linked very tightly to policy making,
several of the prevailing‘rules of the game'of policy making had to be respected, such as the need to avoid politically contentious proposals in the strategy document.
In the end, the strategy document becomes official policy. Second the comparatively short, and thus policy-relevant, time horizon implied that severra important longer-term issues,
likely to be of a controversial nature, were addressed not prominently. This concerns, for instance, the future role of the City of Vienna in the wider CENTRROP region.
This issue, as well as some others that could have given rise to uncertainties and thus to the consideration of alternative futures had been addressed in the forward-looking part Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 967 of the preceding research programme on the Viennese innovation system,
but were not taken up in the participatory RTI-strategy process. Third, the structural and organisational rigidities of urban research and innovation poliic that will need to be overcome for establishing novel types
and areas of policy action requiring a better networked approach, both within local government and beyond (e g. innovationorieente procurement), were addressed in the process,
Overall, the need to achieve consensus on immediate policy actions among the key local policy actors implied that several of the more controversial issues,
but the closeness to policy making implied that some of the exploratory and‘out-of-the-box'thinking that would usually be part of a foresight process was regarded not desirable
Notes on contributors Matthias Weber is Head of Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI) Policy Unit at Austrian Institute of technology (AIT) invienna.
He has been working for many years as scientist and policy advisor on matters of RTI policy, at regional, national as well as at European level.
Between 2006 and 2008 hewas leading a research programme on regional innovation patterns and policy in cooperation with the City of Vienna.
Klaus Kubeczko is Senior researcher at Austrian Institute of technology (AIT) in the Department of Foresight & Policy development.
Barbara Grunewald has been Research Associate at Austrian Institute of technology (AIT) in the Department of Foresight & Policy development since 2005.
Reflections on the co-evolution of innovation theory, policy and practice: The emergence of the Swedish Agency for Innovation systems.
navigating the complex landscape of policy strategies. Technological forecasting & Social Change 75, no. 4: 462 82.
rethinking the role of policy. Enterprise&innovation Management Studies 1, no. 1: 73 102. Smith, K. 2002.
In Strategic policy intelligence: current trends, the state of play and perspectives, ed. A. Tübke, K. Ducatel, J. Gavigan and P. Moncada-Paternò-Castello.
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:10 03 december 2014 Trade-offs between policy impacts of future-oriented analysis 969 Smits, R,
and the idea of shaping the future by influencing public policy and strategic decisions. 3 In their seminal paper on‘Inclusive foresight'Loveridge and Street (2005) argue that the credibiilit of foresight is dependent on extending participation to social stakeholders, especially those not normally seeking participation themselves.
or may be impacted by a given approach to policy making, as for example within the areas of environmental regulation or energy conservation.
as a more direct process of establishing a desired vision of a communal future not necessarily based on different future scenarios. 5 This latter approach is politically crucial for public organisations trying to develop policy and long-term thinking.
n9) writes that‘All policy makers are expected to think about the risks associated with a policy and how these might best be managed'.
Building on these arguments Jenssen (2007) advocates a more cautious approach to the importance of foresight as a strateggi tool for policy
Most of those belonging to this age group have no right to vote nor are entitled they to exercise influence as individuals on public policy making in any other form.
The notions of active citizenship and community involvement have become increasingly promineen in political discussions and policy practices within planning and future oriented governance (Stukas and Dunlap 2002;
Futures the journal of policy, planning and futures studies. Johnston, R. 2001. Foresight refining the process.
Decision making in the public sector. In Scenarios in public policy, ed. G. Ringland, 124 31. Chichester: Johnwiley.
Scenarios in public policy. Chichester: Johnwiley. Sanz-Menéndez, L, . and C. Cabello. 2000. Expectations and learning as principles for shaping the future.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011