and technology publication and patent abstract databases to better inform technology management. To do so requires developing templates of innovation indicators to answer standard questions.
and retrieve electronic documents. This counters the current arrangements in many organizations. Often, an information services unit handles all data requests.
S) he eventually provided the requester with a very few documents to read. Such an arrangement fails at QTIP.
The resulting information for btech miningq consists primarily of science and technology (S&t) publication and patent abstract records.
For the SOFC queries, we examined 1286 of the publication abstracts that included SOFC in their title
Note that this is way too many documents to sensibly read and digest! So we turn to software tools to help bprofile the R&d domainq 5,
The publication trends (lower left) show this nano-combo of topics increasing strongly in contrast to the other clusters.!
o publication and patent activity relating to the candidate hot topic (bnano-comboq-nano-surfaces
as measured by S&t publications, is hot, o patenting, especially new (priority) patenting is much less recent,
o another indicator of how hot a research area is the ratio of conference to journal publication relatively low for this subtopic in comparison to the larger research domain we might want to explore this discrepancy with our subject experts,
o several terms appear for the first time in the most recent year's publications we could use these to stimulate discussion with our subject experts,
261 articles 44%last 3 years 72 priority patents 14%last 3 years 133 family patents 32%last 3 years*Conference/Journal Ratio:
Foger 4 Badwal 22 Jarrey 8 Top Authors Top Inventors Next Step: Initiate contact with Foger or Badwal?
The table (lower right) indicates the top inventors and authors.!From this digest of the company's open R&d face, we pose the action question for managerial decision.
Researchers usually mine the literature to find a few bnuggetsq that speak closely to their interests.
On another level, the Dutch government allocates research support to universities based in part upon their publication records.
Publications are weighted according to disciplinary journal impact criteria. Journal Citation Reports provide the basis for calculating the merits of individual and unit outputs.
and EI Compendex, downloading 500-record samples of recent publication abstracts with SOFC in titles or keywords.!
Perusal of the organizational affiliations of the authors suggests possible benchmark universities. A l. Porter/Technological forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 1070 1081 1079!
I search a compilation of Georgia Tech publication records to augment the VP's awareness of who is active in fuel cells.
which open literature publication is not appropriate.!10:20 am: Powerpoints with interpretive comments, and a short background technical report, are provided to the VP.
improving the literature review, Scientometrics 53 (2002) 351 370.6 K. Bo rner, C. Chen, K. W. Boyack, Visualizing knowledge domains, Annual Review of Information science and Technology 37 (2003) 179 255.7 A l. Porter, E. Yglesias, A. Kongthon, C. Courseault, N c. Newman, Getting
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To cite this article: Ahti Salo, Ville Brummer & Totti Könnölä (2009) Axes of balance in foresight reflections from Finnsight 2015, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 21:8, 987-1001, DOI:
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what policy developments have taken place after to the publication of foresight results, in the belief that our analysis may be instructive for the planning of large-scale foresight exercises that need to serve high-level policy objectives subject to demanding time constraints and expectations.
*Corresponding author. Email: ahti. salo@tkk. fi ISSN 0953-7325 print/ISSN 1465-3990 online 2009 Taylor & francis DOI:
except for the first author of this article who served as its chairman and the project manager of Finnsight. 3. 2. Foresight panels
The resulting proposals were collated into a compilation document which was made available to the panellists. Using the 1-to-7 Likert scale
In each panel, this prior consultation process resulted in a collated document that contained some 30 50 driving forces as well as numerical assessments and written comments on them.
This compilation document was circulated to the panellists about three days before the workshop. Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:11 03 december 2014 Axes of balance in foresight 993 In the first panel meetings
In most panels, the discussions were captured by building Mindmap charts that provided, together with the compilation document,
the compilation documents were useful to the panel chairmen, because they could start the development of the panel reports from an extensive set of documentation,
instead of having to merely recall discussiion at past panel meetings. The documents also mitigated the risk that two chairmen would have exercised an unduly strong influence on the report contents.
Third, the templates for driving forces and focus areas of competence helped ensure the attention would be to stay on topics that were aligned with the objectives of the exercise.
Further to the publication of the reports Finnsight received quite a bit of media attention, as evidenced by the large number of related articles in professional magazines, for instance.
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:11 03 december 2014 996 A. Salo et al. d) Subsequent policy developments Because foresight is a highly systemic instrument with close linkages to other policy processes that contribute to the development of the R&i system,
Also, some Finnsight panellists have made contributions to the establishmeen of these centres, which has created informal links between Finnsight and the centres.
considering that references to Finnsight reports have been made in documents published in Japan, South korea and Canada and by the European commission. 8 One of the objectives of Finnsight was that it should encourage other actors of the R&i system to initiate foresight activities.
Likewise, 90%noted that their contributions had been accounted properly for in the reports; and 88%thought that Finnsight will be important to the development of the Finnish R&i system.
when making their contributions to panel work. 4. 3. Consensual vs dissensual development of recommendations Consensual development of recommendations can be understood as the creation of jointly characterrise priorities, collaborative networks and future actions,
For example, the compilation of documents from the internet-based questionnaires showed the full distributions of the panellists'assessment ratings
Some commentators noted that this variabilitywould have been of sufficient interest to deserve publication (cf. Ansoff 1975;
While this did lead to some divergence between panels (for instance in the use of compilation documents from the internet-based questionnaires),
and that the contributions of all panellists would be reflected duly in the panel reports. It also alleviated the burden of the panel chairmen who could make use of compilation documents effectively
when writing the panel reports. Also, from the view of the perceived balance of the exercise, it was appropriate that all the materials were produced by the panels themselves.
This approach obviated the need to‘feed'the panels with background documentation which would have necessitated uneasy choices as to
Notes 1. The views expressed are purely those of the authors and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European commission. 2. The Academy of Finland is comparable to the US National science Foundation
Two special editions of journals reflected the continuing methodological interest but crossed this with an interest in the evaluation of impacts and in the use of FTA in two domains, business and higher education 9, 10.
and orient the contributions (via an extended abstract on the website) to the selected themes to enable sufficient coherence to permit a productive discourse.
which this edition derives emerged. The 2008 FTA Conference continued the focus on the‘‘impacts and implications of FTA for policy and decision making''but this time constructed its themes and anchor papers differently.
Specialised topics have been covered by special editions of other journals 12 13 but the anchor papers plus another which represented a crosscutting theme emerging at the conference (tailoring foresight) have been put together here.
The special edition concludes with two contributions that sought to take advantage of the confluence of futures expertise brought about by the conference.
Concluding the edition, in a short essay, Johnston and Cagnin review the main findings from a series of interviews about the status of FTA as an activity with nine personalities attending the FTA conference.
Moving forward the edition has shown FTA to be in a transitional stage brought about both by its internal dynamics and by the broader global environment.
SDME 10/84, B-1049 Brussels, Belgium*Corresponding author E-mail addresses: luke. georghiou@mbs. ac. uk (L. Georghiou) jennifer. harper@gov. mt (J. C. Harper) fabiana. scapolo@ec. europa. eu (F
Futures 43 (2011) 232 242 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
§The views expressed are purely those of the authors and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European commission.*
*Corresponding author. Tel.:++33 01 45 92 65 82. E-mail addresses: a. schoen@esiee. fr (A. Schoen), totti. konnola@ec. europa. eu (T. Ko nno la), philine. warnke@isi. fraunhofer. de (P. Warnke
According to the‘World of Science'the average yearly growth of publications is around 1, %while e g. genomics has been growing for the last 10 years at 8,
These figures of change synthesise the evolution and reconfiguration of professional communities, pools of scientific publications.
The two strings of co-activity (scientific authorship by corporate researchers and patented invention by academics) can be analysed as linkages between the scientific networks (formed by authors)
The research field of GM plant is characterised by a strong growth of the number of articles.
%‘‘all plants''(80%)publications. 12 Pattern of growth: Plant genomics is a well-defined cluster in the post human genome project scientific landscape.
Table 3 Search regimes analysis through scientific publications and patents'network properties assessed at journal,
flows between journals Flow of citations between clusters compared with flow of citations within cluster Documents network Number of docs Citations flows between docs clusters Flow of citations between clusters compared with flow
of citations within cluster Platform cited within scientific publications Words network Number of words Persons network Number of persons Academic patenting Industrial publications Co-active researchers'collaborations
Authors cited within patents 11 Source: ISAAA<http://gmoinfo. jrc. it/gmp browse. aspx>.>12 Source:
one third of the publications and one quarter of the clusters 46.5.2.2. N&n: Knowledge dynamics Growth:
The high growth rate which characterises the field (the number of scientific publication has grown from 134%between 1998 and 2006) 46.
It is characterised by a strong coactivity (publications'authors that are as well as inventors) and an intense institutional complementarity between academia and industry.
Based on this analysis conclusions for potential Foresight exercises with a relevant contribution for the development of these fields were sketched.
Having illustrated the proposed framework all along this article with examples dealing with the European level, we suggest our methodology is applicable indeed for designing such ERA Foresight activities
We are grateful to all the participants for their comments and contributions in particular to Jennifer Cassingena Harper, Luke Georghiou, Jari Kaivo-oja, Philippe Laredo and Matthias Weber.
This article describes the scanning process as SRIC-BI practices it, the importance of open intelligence systems,
Stephen Haeckel 2, author of Adaptive Enterprise, notes badaptive organizations require, first of all, a systematic ability to search out,
The management literature is replete with admonitions to pay attention not only to competitors but also to external factors
Management literature is short, however, on practical solutions for methodically gleaning early signals of change from the surroundings
and the documentation of findings for management are all part of the normal, ongoing cycles of the scanning process.
They most typically come from publications but can also derive from personal experience, interpersonal networking sources,
An abstract includes source information, a short summary of the article or event in question, and a description of the implications that the scanner believes that the item presents.
The abstracts are searchable by date, author, source, topic, or scanner. Users can assemble any number of abstracts on any topics into a customized set of abstracts.
if participants value each other's contributions regardless of rank in the organization. The meetings can be relatively self-regulating
the accountants will want immediate documentation of a return on investment for the cost of the meetings.
Futures 43 (2011) 243 251 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
*Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: luke. georghiou@mbs. ac. uk (L. Georghiou), jennifer. harper@gov. mt (J. Cassingena Harper.
which have been classified here by the authors. The most popular group is one we have called analysing the future potential of technologies.
Substantial effort is put into the preparation of technology landscaping or foresight documents as an input to the strategy process 17.
While foresight is used commonly in connection with the public-Futures 43 (2011) 252 264 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
§The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors only and may not in any circumstances be regarded as stating an official position of the European commission or of its services,
*Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: totti. konnola@impetusolutions. com (T. Ko nno la), fabiana. scapolo@ec. europa. eu (F. Scapolo), paul. desruelle@ec. europa. eu
and discussion on the possible advantages of the proposed framework for the characterisation of foresight projects as contribution to the policy-making process. 2. Characteristics of foresight projects To understand the impacts of foresight in the system,
Anticipation of intelligence (or knowledge) is a contribution to improve the knowledge base for the designing of policies.
Instrumental The document is a source for the development of the UK Defence policy. Consensual This process aims to provide new evidence
While the authors consider diverse approaches valuable in the realm of foresight to address societal challenges, for the purposes of this paper,
but rather to analyse projects that the authors knew well and considered relevant and/or distinctive to provide some empirical findings for further analysis
"Today, with the i2010 policy framework, the EU aims to"promote the positive contribution that information
Its contribution was, however, difficult to trace in published official documents of the European commission that often do not explicitly refer to sources of ideas.
It is one of the source documents for the development of the UK Defence policy. The outcomes of DCDC Strategic Trends are target to defence decision-makers
we elaborate and attest its validity in the context of ex post analysis of a number of foresight projects focusing on sustainability, security and information society and their contribution to policy-making.
Ramon Compan o'and Ioannis Maghiros as well as to anonymous reviewers for their contributions to improve the paper.
http://www. vtt. fi/inf/pdf/publications/2007/P653. pdf (2009-11-10). 18 Nordic H2 Energy Foresight for the Nordic Council
http://ipts. jrc. ec. europa. eu/publications/pub. cfm? id=1208 (2009-11-10). 23 R. Compan o',C. Pascu, J.-C. Burgelman, M. Rader, R. Saracco, G. Spinelli
http://ipts. jrc. ec. europa. eu/publications/pub. cfm? id=1431 (2009-11-10). 24 A. Fujii, Foresight on information society technologies in Europe, in:
http://ipts. jrc. ec. europa. eu/publications/pub. cfm? id=1919 (2009-11-10). 26 L. Georghiou, Third generation foresight:
Futures 43 (2011) 265 278 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
*Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: Annele. Eerola@vtt. fi (A. Eerola), Ian. Miles@mbs. ac. uk (I. Miles.
For a more conventional far-future vision Last and First Men (1930) is a good introduction to this great author.
Several authors have suggested ways of understanding these phases in a little more depth. Thus Horton 9 depicted foresight as moving through three phases the chronological order is somewhat flexible, with scope for reiteration and overlap of these phases:
Typical methods employed here are literature reviews, interviews with experts, horizon scanning. Roughly Horton's subtasks (i),(ii) and (iii.
and groups to make really significant contributions. Typically these contributions will involve grasping one set of issues
and explicating just how important and potentially transformative these will be. Occasionally we may see some broader overview coming from such sources often on the basis of the authors having absorbed a great deal of FTA thinking from other sources such as Naisbitt's Megatrends
or Coates'2025 11.7 This is not to endorse all of the specific conclusions or forecasts of either study.
which can contribute important contributions to debate about future prospects and possibilities. Unfortunately for every study of this sort there are typically,
The quality control mechanism for popular FTA literature are practically nonexistent, and it would be valuable
(if generally less-hyped) publications and modes of study. With the rise of Foresight programmes, and‘‘fully fledged foresight''as an ideal, 8 FTA often involves much wider engagement and involvement of stakeholders,
Coates et al. 11.8 See Miles 13 and Georghiou et al. 37 for accounts of‘‘fully fledged foresight''a concept taken up by several other authors,
I. Miles/Futures 43 (2011) 265 278 269 programmes and projects (discussed, for example, in the literatures on complex product systems,
and being able to draw on a well-established literature concerning them. The knowledge and mental models of practitioners and stakeholders may have to be brought into play in such cases.
what is at stake is ways of handling‘‘hard facts'',through, for example, websites, databases, publications, dissemination procedures, etc.
and knowledge One of the most influential contributions to thinking about organisational learning and KM has been the model of the dynamics of shared knowledge creation developed by Nonaka and Takeuchi 19.
Capturing people's knowledge by rendering it as documents or structured processes Informationinternalisation: Knowledge acquisition learning how to use models, formulae, equipment, methods etc.
it cannot simply be transferred like a document or technological artefact. People can gain knowledge from the act of interpreting, reading, reverse engineering texts and other artefacts;
(which retains the tacit/explicit terminology used in the original publication). The earlier discussion of sensemaking and foresight phases can readily be related to such a SECI approach.
Even a cursory examination of the KM literature will confirm several things. This is an expanding field (with elements of fashion and faddishness.
While the recent expansion in the FTA methodological literature is enabling us to say a good deal more about how methods can be used,
In the UK, there had been major scenario work on strategies for developing a competitive edge in nanotechnology and literature/expert surveying of social issues associated with this field, in the early years of the present century.
The impressive results of this work represent a refreshing counterpoint both to the technooptiimis of the main Ami literature,
and SF authors. 13 These are only two of many examples of lively debate being occasioned by efforts to bring FTA METHODS to bear on issues that have already been the subject of influential FTA studies.
accessed 29/07/09.13 The main publication from SWAMI iswright et al. 42, though much other material is available in journal articles
and online a convenient brief report is on the EFMN website at http://www. efmn. info/files/EFMN%20brief%20no.%
, Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, Calif, 1995.33 F. Scapolo, I. Miles, Eliciting experts'knowledge: a comparison of two methods, Technological forecasting and Social Change 73 (6)( 2006) 679 704.34 H. Linstone, M. Turoff (Eds.
http://forera. jrc. ec. europa. eu/documents/papers/paper%20dark%20scenarios%20fta%20conf%20sept. pdf (accessed 29/07/09). 44 H. S d
Futures 43 (2011) 279 291 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
*Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: cristiano. cagnin@ec. europa. eu (C. Cagnin), denis. loveridge@manchester. ac. uk (D. Loveridge), ozcan. saritas@manchester. ac. uk (O. Saritas.
H g wells and Aldous Huxley were among the earliest authors to challenge the conventional mantra, exposing the hidden social consequences and concerns for the future of advances, real and imagined, of S&t though in very different ways.
It also involves the positive contributions of corporations, institutions and associations to enhance public policy within a new framework,
The latter is the principle of Agenda 21 (the document consensually approved at the UN Conference on Environment
It is a means to make contribution towards more responsible and sustainable business behaviour. Its selling point is that SRI funds allow investors to invest according to more ethical values
a point made forcefully at least as early as 1972 in the publication of the‘‘Limits to Growth''38.
At the same time, the contribution and intervention of FTA on global issues still needs to be conceptualised better to enable the community to take action.
<http://www. un. org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21toc. htm>.24 D. Doane, The myth of CSR:
literature review and research options, European Management Journal 23 (1)( 2005) 27 36.31 U. Steger, A. Ionescu-Somers, O. Salzmann, The economic foundations of corporate
an opportunity to contribute to a value-adding Futures 43 (2011) 292 312 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
and presented back to the attendees in a plenary presentation by the authors. The current paper aims to clarify the concepts first by suggesting definitions
*Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: ozcan. saritas@manchester. ac. uk (O. Saritas), jack. smith@drdc-rddc. gc. ca (J. E. Smith.
The review of the literature indicated that these concepts are considered not and compared in one single source.
Arguably the best known work in wild cards comes from Petersen 7 author of‘‘Out of the blue How to Anticipate Big Future Surprises''.
The definition suggested by the authors of the current paper is as follows: Discontinuities are those situations impacts where over time
We believe that this strong contribution from the more experienced contributors supports the basic assumption behind the survey that such a gathering of experts would constitute a uniquely defined relevant cohort worthy of sampling
%There was also a significant contribution from the Governmental respondents (over 31%.%Low number of respondents from NGOS (0. 95%)in trend assessment was noteworthy.
The authors acknowledge that it could benefit from additional content assessment. However subsequent work will concentrate more on the interpretation of the rich data set that has been acquired
Another paper dedicated to a further elaboration of the BPS results is planned by the authors in 2009.
This classification was made by the authors to manage the high number and diverse nature of the responses.
Overall, the authors are pleased very with the response even though time did not permit a full analysis of the data.
In summary, the authors are excited by how this information might be dissected further and examined for themes
Acknowledgement We are grateful to our colleague Phd researcher Ms. Graciela Sainz de la Fuente for her valuable contribution to the analysis of the Big Picture Survey data.
2007 2036, third edition, Swindon, 2007. Available at: http://www. mod. uk/NR/rdonlyres/94a1f45ea883049db-B319-DF68C28D561D/0/strat trends 17mar07. pdf (last visited on:
Another pointed to the historical limitations of any attempt to Futures 43 (2011) 313 316 A r T I C L E I N F O Article history:
A full list of the interviewees is provided in Annex 1. A video of the interviews can be accessed at http://forera. jrc. ec. europa. eu/fta 2008/videos. html.*Corresponding author at:
'An important lesson for strengthening the impact of fta was drawn fromthe evaluation literature. In this field a distinction has been developed between summative evaluation,
the greater emphasis should be on improving the processes that influence impact. 3. The contribution of the FTA Conference A particular feature of the FTA Conference series is that it‘‘acts as a magnet to bring people interested in FTA together
Acknowledgements The authors greatly appreciate the contributions of Totti Ko nno la and Karel Haegeman from the European commission DG Joint research Centre Institute for Prospective Studies to revising the paper
Design/methodology/approach This introductory paper provides an overview of selected FTA 2011 Conference contributions for this Special issue.
All contributions had in common that they were calling for appropriate forms of FTA to support
In this context, this introductory paper provides an overview of selected FTA 2011 conference contributions and the diversity of application fields in
Thus, the following articles explore not only the opportunities and limitations of DOI 10.1108/14636681211256062 VOL. 14 NO. 4 2012, pp. 279-281, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited,
the article argues for equipping legal activities with a set of tools, methods and approaches that enables them to acknowledge
the article explains the various benefits that the application of specific FTA methodological approaches (such as scenario planning,
The article also examines the prospective perils that systematically applying FTA to Law may bring about.
To sum up, the articles in this special issue demonstrate a variety of FTA application fields and offer a glimpse onto possible consequences that grand challenges may imply for the development of FTA in the coming years.
About the authors Vicente Carabias, who has a MSC in Environmental sciences from ETHZ in 1996,
Having led the former Swiss contribution to PASTILLE (EESD-FP5; Promoting Action for Sustainability Through Indicators at Local Level in Europe), INTELCITIES (IST-FP6) and REFORM (Rok-FP6),
Vicente Carabias is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: cahu@zhaw. ch Peter De Smedt has a background in ecological system analyses.
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