complex global issues have moved to the forefront of policy-making. These grand challenges require policy-makers to address a variety of interrelated issues,
which are built upon yet uncoordinated and dispersed bodies of knowledge. Due to the social dynamics of innovation, new socio-technical subsystems are emerging,
In this paper we argue that issues of how knowledge is represented can have a part in this lack of exploitation.
-be helpful in engaging decision-makers in specific issues, legitimating a chosen course of action, and supporting fruitful debates among stakeholders.
Grand challenges require that policy-makers address a variety of interrelated issues, which are built upon as yet uncoordinated and dispersed bodies of knowledge.
Section 3 describes how we conceptualize inspiring issues and paradigms from different scientific disciplines such as business and innovation research, futures studies, sociology and policy analysis.
The three questions represent a specific perspective linking action and decision-makingwith issues of (i) emergence,
What methodological issues are salient in relation to the identification of emerging trends and change? How commensurable are different modes of modeling and other forms of dynamical representation?
by placing a major factor influencing the future of the issue being investigated on each of the axes,
An overview of our findings is summarized in the subsequent sub-sections (sub-sections 4. 1 4. 3). Each of these subsections includes a description of representation issues linked with the approach and methods used, input, process and main outcome.
becomes one of the key issues. In order to avoid surprises the policy or strategy process should be able to open the scope of observation for periphery incidents and early,
we argue that our reflexive inquiry of the selected cases from Appendix 1 helped disclose several representation issues in scenario practice.
In this paper we argue that issues of representation have played a part in this lack of exploitation.
By doing so, we are able to link issues of representation with groups of scenario practice.
we suggest that representation issues (i e. what is, and what is represented not in the scenarios,
In this paper we argue that the limits of current practice are to a certain extent linked with representation issues.
However, a variety of representation issues exist and more experiments and research are needed. Thirdly, we want to emphasize that the social dimension in innovation systems should be acknowledged as a legitimate research area
analytical and methodological issues, Res. Policy 31 (2002) 233 245.25 T. Rickards, The future of innovation research, in:
it seems that for specific issues, as in the case of emerging technologies, the diverse and dynamic environment enables the actors within the pluralistic system to use FTA to build up governance networks
but focus predominantly on economic issues and impacts. The BMBF commissioned several forecasting studies on nanotechnology-related fields starting in the early 1990s.
and to prepare these issues for funding activities 48. The results of the forecasting exercises were published in technology analyses,
such as the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU) focus on regulation issues relevant for their domain without being involved fully in the ecosystem of nano-related Innovation policy definition
Washington. 46 M. C. Roco, Environmentally responsible development of nanotechnology, How the U s. Government is Dealing with the Immediate and Long-term issues of this New technology, Environmental science & Technology, 2005.
Weak signals in the INFU project were defined as signals of emerging issues. They can sometimes hint about future changes.
the project team identified eight critical issues that seemed to have special potential for changing today's innovation patterns.
the next issue that will have to be tackled is the use of such transformative visions in actually managing transformative transition processes 34,35. 3 E g.
While there is as yet no clear methodological answer to the identification issue there have been some institutional responses and new organisational models of FTA.
But there are shared issues with the wider discipline of evaluation in dealing with time-lag between action
This Special issue, like many compendia arising out of a professional conference, offers a sample of the state of the art at a particular point in time.
The papers presented in this Special issue represent only a small selection of the work presented and discussed at the 2011 FTA Conferences.
The selection of papers presented in this Special issue all share the aim of enhancing the usefulness of FTA
and finalize this Special issue reflects the difficulty of this kind of ex-post process and the far-flung and changing circumstances of its authors and editors.
Furthermore, the editors of this Special issue, each from their own vantage point, have been following the evolution of the disparate fields brought together by FTA over the years.
we believe that the papers in this Special issue, offer some clues both negative and positive regarding the ways to build shared discourses that cover theory and practice.
Almost all the articles in the Special issue take on this challenge the rationale for matching particular tools to particular tasks.
On the positive side the articles in this Special issue show a vibrant community of practice that has been actively innovating
In the view of the editors of this Special issue the FTA and Foresight communities may be at a turning point:
and the papers presented in this Special issue. What is clear is that such efforts are needed to at once provide more consistent and robust design principles to guide the matching of tools to tasks
generating more papers like those found in this Special issue, and provoking further conversations on to use the future in ways that take advantage of humanity's many anticipatory systems. 1 R. Miller, R. Poli, P. Rossel, The discipline of anticipation, forthcoming, UNESCO.
, Denmark 1. Introduction This paper originates from two issues that are being discussed in the current academic literature on foresight and in the international foresight community.
The first issue concerns the integration of foresight into national policy-making processes. Foresight projects have often been carried out as stand-alone activities
and that their processes relate to policy making processes 1. Academic research has explored also this issue, focusing on different characterisations and typologies of foresight projects 2 3. The literature has suggested that foresight must be an integral part of policy-making processes 4,
The fact that context matters leads to the other issue that this paper originates from
His dimensions were constructed all in such a way that they addressed fundamental issues, which he believes all societies must address.
which is a fundamental issue for any society and for which a range of solutions are found Individualism The degree to
or political issues is associated with personal antipathies. In societies that have more uncertainty avoidance, foresight processes might be seen to create a political battlefield where stakeholders with conflicting viewpoints seek to win the battle,
White papers have seemed often negotiated rather than analytical presentations of political issues...It almost seems as though there is a guiding principle a la‘‘We'll figure it out as we go we can always fix things
In the interviews, we used open questions, to gain a broader understanding of the issues mentioned in the research questions.
The national‘organizational foresight'study indeed focused more on organisational issues such as how to cooperate extensively with other (government
to gain a better understanding of the future of the issue at stake, the degrees of uncertainty involved, the coherence of future developments, the speed of change of developments,
other issues and (political) interests start playing a role as well. Also, in the‘organizational foresight'study, the various foresight studies of the future carried out by the government departments are designed to form initial ideas and opinions about organisational change.
possibly because they are involved more in strategic issues than in operational issues in comparison to local civil servants.
the national civil servants have an interest in making sure that they are well-informed about the relevant stakeholders and issues,
Consequently, there was less time to learn from the foresight study in a strategic 1 Particular issues arise in the case of quantitative forecasting models,
the duration of the process does not appear to be a major issue. Initiating new foresight processes just before a new Minister
and write about certain future issues that were deemed politically inappropriate by their previous political masters. 3. 5. 3. Organisational
For instance, possible future economic issues can be related to social and technological issues, while (local and national) governments are organised often along these thematic pillars.
Da Costa et al. 25 stated that a lot of effort and commitment is needed for policymakker to switch from dealing with short-term issues towards a more long-term and holistic approach.
while, at the national level, greater emphasis was placed on content-related issues. There were also similarities with regard to the implementation of foresight studies and the use of foresight insights, for example the important success factors of leadership and confidence in the process.
and conceptualises design and managerial issues particularly relevant in the international context. Four principles for global foresight design and management are identified.
new and emerging issues in corporate R&d, JRC-IPTS, 8-9/10/07, 2007.25 M. Taish, J. Cassina, B. Cammarino, S. Terzi, N
Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe and Karlsruhe Institute of technology, Karlsruhe, Germany Received 29 february 2008 Introduction The contributions included in this special issue build on material presented at the Second International Seville Seminar on Future-oriented technology analysis (FTA
10.1016/j. techfore. 2008.03.001 The six articles included in this Special issue were presented in 2006. The overarching theme was the impact of fta approaches on policy and decision-making,
The fourth paper, by Robinson and Propp, addresses the important issue of alignment of actors for innovation policy to succeed.
The objective of tackling this issue was to address sponsor concerns for better accounts of demonstrable impacts.
The fifth paper included in this Special issue, by Amanatidou and Guy, was a contribution to the above described theme.
and goal attainment levels. 3. FTA on specific issues Two themes of the 2006 FTA International Seminar put FTA into contexts.
The two issues are FTA in a business context and FTA on Higher education. The objective of the first was to collect knowledge,
The last article in this Special issue entitled‘Devising Futures for Universities in a Multilevel Structure: a methodological experiment'by Havas, is a contribution to the Higher education theme.
and he addresses the above listed shortcomings. 4. Concluding remarks We note some of the issues presented in the concluding session of the 2006 FTA INTERNATIONAL SEVILLE SEMINAR.
These issues could be considered as reflections linking back to the main objective of the Seminar to advance
In the opportunity identification and idea generation phases, issues such as the‘functional fixation'of users to their current reality and the difficulty for users to break loose from their own use context are mentioned 19
and the emerging necessity of diagnosing the changing innovation landscape to address these issues for‘Foresightful Innovation.'
price is not an issue. The PP3 uses streaming services such as Netflix or Hulu in order to be able to immediately consume very recent content that is of interest (e g.,
a literature review, ejov Special issue on Living Labs 10 (2008. K. De Moor et al.//Futures 59 (2014) 39 49 49
lessons from initiating policy dialogues on emerging issues, Science and Public policy (2012)( forthcoming. 49 T. Ko nno la, A. Salo, C. Cagnin, V. Carabias, E. Vilkkumaa, Facing the future:
technical issues strategic positioning of Rijkswaterstaat vis-a vis other organizations and decision making about exploitation of inventions Singular activity 1. 3 Business case analyses Used for sensibility analyses
including methodologies combining scenario analysis, multi-issue actor analysis, roadmapping and target costing 39, business modeling and future studies.
Thus, the futures research activities within EICT usually address thematic issues in various industries. The future of the partners involved
, scenario analysis, multi-issue actor analysis, roadmapping Project 2. 3 Thematic innovation radar Identifies new technologies, trends and topics in a predefined thematic field Project 2. 4 Working group Provide a setting to explore future topics
When recalling the application of the Cyclic Innovation Model to the three cases at least three issues are noticeable:
and private organisations are able to deal with the issue of uncertainty by incorpooratin forward-looking methodologies into their decision-making processes.
The paper addresses a range of emerging issues and their possiibl impacts throughout all stages of the process
which is designed to give a comprehensive picture of relevant future issues for an actor (or a set of actors),
and of the possible interaction of all scanned issues and their relevance for strategic decision-making. A repetitive character:
Not only on the far horizon, to search for new emerging issues, but also to check whether and how phenomena that were observed at an earlier stage are developiin over time.
Well-known examples include the Internaationa Council for Science (2002) exercise that focused on societal issues and research agenda settiin and also its foresight analysis (International council for science, 2004.
and comparing horizon scans lies in the expectation that the sum of the scans may reveal issues that have been overlooked in the separate national scans.
but also about the premises and values that were taken into account for the identification and prioritisation of the issues colleccte by the scans,
society (including demographical issues) without public services; S&t (including S&t policy; economy and finance (including its governance;
Although some issues could be placed in two or even three categories, it was not difficult to label the majority of issues according to these main categories that are nearly identical to the themes as used in the STEEPV approach (see Loveridge, 2002).
For further comparison and analytical reasons, these main categories have been given a completely new set of subcategories based on the different sets of subcategories that were used in the UK
and Netherlland scans (see Table 2). A number of issues could be placed under several of these new subcategorries These issues were noted during the process of comparison.
These categories were used principally to compare the issues. They were used neither to create a new taxonomy,
An attempt was made also to select some issue clusters with estimated high impact to investigate the usefulnees of joint horizon scanning as preparation for more in-depth foresight to design common policies
and research programming on strategic challenges and questions within these issue clusters. Preparing further cooperation
Identify new challenging issues for policy reseaarch development and innovation. Identify knowledge gaps (relevant for resolving future problems
Identify possible inter-linkages (enhancers, inhibitoors multipliers) between future issues (from differren parts of the horizon) with a potentially major impact.
and sets of issues which cross policy domains for further focused foresight (improving the scoping of these foresiigh activities) and research.
issues were collected from a variety of (future) literature and the internet and through consultation with experts (workshops, interviiew etc..
In the UK scan, experts were asked to write brief papers on the selected issues to deepen the contents;
The issues in the OECD scan were drafted first by OECD staff, then amended by the DASTI,
After the issues had been selected experts were asked to write synthesis papeers based on a number of cited evidence sources,
to explore each issue, including its implications. The primary data for the Danish scan were deliverre by the OECD International Futures Programme Unit with support from DASTI,
which adapted the issue descriptions to the Danish situation after Horizon scanning can be seen as an adaptive foresight instrument that deliberately challenges policy-makers to look at uncertainties
Within the UK scan and The netherlands scan, attemmpt have been made to rank the issues according to estimated overall impact (on implicit
and values for identiffyin and filtering issues'below) and likelihood by inter-subjective judgement. In the Dutch scan as well as in the UK scan, networks of future analysts were used to support the scan as a permanent soundiin board.
giving all visitors the opportunity to contriibut a new issue and/or to comment and assess the published issues with regard to their plausibility
and impact (taking into account the sustainability dimensioon) At the end of the 2007 round, the issues were published in a final report.
After completion, the data in the OECD DASTI scan were published on the OECD website. Principal use of the scan data The UK horizon scan (see Figure 1) has tended to be used as part of a client-oriented project approach
(and data from other speciaalis sources) relevant to the client's policy domaain Depending on the issues encountered in this analysis,
In The netherlands the approach used can be descrribe as the cluster approach (see Figure 2). This started with the assembling of clusters of issues with potentially impact-rich interactions.
Furthermore, it was expected that publication of the issue lists on the horizon scan website would have the effect of raising public awareness of the issue.
In Denmark, the scan issues were used as input for the selection of prioritised research themes in a four-year cycle of research funding (see Figure 3). The scan data were used alongside the outcome of a public internet‘hearing'process that delivered an additional input
and public policy high-impact issues Further Communication events New material Issue analysis and synthesis Workshop Cross-linkages With policy Themed Scenarios Extranet Peer review Discussion groups Updated database Finalised Themed Scenarios Final database Reports and multimedia Output data analysis phase
and filtering issues All horizon scans are based on broad and intensive literature surveys (including foresight, future studies and even science fiction) and panel groups.
and in the UK horizon scan are called issues. Horizzo scanning is different from trend scanning (Rollwaage et al.
Issue (or PTO) selection is therefore based on likelihood and estimated impact on the future of our society.
'In all scans the issues were categorised to achieve a degree of comprehensiveness and to cover all policy domains and science disciplines.
The UK effort has focused on drafting the issue papers in such a way that they present a balanced synthesis of the sources scanned (and referenced),
so that any values (and biasses contained within the issue papers reflect those of the sources.
The number of sources cited per issue paper (generally more than ten), and their diversity, are intended to reduce the risk of one strong viewpooin dominating.
This was also done for issues where authors had (very) different opinions. These sets of shared values14 are:
and issues that were selected. After the report was published the horizon scan team was approached by a number of organisatiion
Joint database A joint database has been established containing 430 issues of which 159 are from The netherlands horizzo scan, 125 from the Danish scan and 146 from the UK scan.
The distribution of the issues over the different categories in each scan is shown in Table 3. Analysis of the joint data
(or granularity) that was used to describe the issues differed slightly between the scans. Despite this
This comparison led to the conclusion that the scans contained many similar issues that were closely relaate that were taken up in all three scans (or at least in two.
Some issues only figured in one scan sometiime because they were specific to the country underttakin the scan.
It is expected that widening the cooperation may reveal more issues of high impact that are overlooked in the scans that are now combinned especially
Discussion and conclusion All three scans delivered issue lists which overlapppe considerably but which were also complementtary This means that cooperation might be rewarding to improve the scanning images for each country
It provides a rich source of Table 3. Category%of issues in Sigma (UK horizon)*%of issues in OECD DASTI (DK-horizon)% of issues in COS (NL-horizon)% of issues in all
/ecology 13.7 15.2 23.3 17.7 Politics/public services 30.1 32.0 35.2 32.6 Total number of issues 146 125 159 430 Note:*
which contains about 100 S&t issues, the comparison shows that the Dutch scan somehow seems to fall short on issues from the society domain Joint horizon scanning Science
and Public policy February 2010 16 weak signals and wild cards that may be used to assees the robustness of results that may come from other forward-looking tools as planning, scenarios and quantitative modelling.
which the number of entirely new issues and weak signals could be increased. New approaches were therefore being considered to boost stakeholder and public involvement, by for example the use of blogs and Wikipedia-like structures,
Supporting evidence and issue description Another common question concerned the high level of aggregation of the issues in the descriptions in the scan highlights the danger of superficiality.
Finally, the handling of science issues in the scans requires a careful approach. This should balance the need for scientific scrutiny
Complexity It is clear that the issues identified in the horizon scans are very different in nature:
or a research funding scheme (as in Denmark) or to identify new crosscutting questions that need further forwardloookin attention with other methods and transdiscipliinar approaches (clusters of issues, as in The netherlands).
Alerting function The fact that some of the scan issues published in 2005 (e g. risk of a financial crisis caused by poor lending practices
and worldwide lack of governmentta financial control) 17 became reality within a very short time frame highlights the value of referring to individual scan issues,
even before they have been considered in combination with other issues in a group context. This alerting aspect makes it particulla interesting to identify faint
what has changed in (our perception of) future issues over a period of time. We can conclude with an example of an analysis by the joint scan.
This issue not only requires a transdiscipliinar approach, but it also requires a policy that transcends several policy areas and the borders of countries.
Many issues could still be placed under two and sometimes more categories. 14. It should be clear that the pursuit of all these values may creaat tensions
because issues may cause very high positive impact on one or more of these values but at the same time very negative impact on one or more of the others. 15.
Identification of Key emerging Issues in Science and Society: an International Perspecctiv on National foresight Studies.
nevertheless, it confirmed some issues of major importance to the various stakeholders. HE INFORMATION AND communication technologies (ICT) sector accounted for about 5%of the size of the European economy and 3%of total employment in 2005 (Turlea et al.
a sector analysiis a Delphi survey, a scenario process leading to an analysis of issues and a final policy analysis.
in order to reach a consensus as to the most likely developments and critical issues for further policy discussion.
The Delphi was meant to help reduce the uncertainntie associated with some of the impacts we came across in the analysis. Sector Analysis Realtime online Delphi Scenario development Policy analysis Issues analysis ICT key trends Trends in actor behaviour Transformation pressures in the CC
value chain Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4 Policy implications Drivers, enablers, threats contextual factors Consensus vs controversial issues Scenario analysis
The policy analysis phase aimed to look not only at the issues as such and potential European policiie to address them,
we analysed demand issues by using data from consumer surveys and developing case studies on failed instances of product introduction
Adaptive foresight in the creative content industries Science and Public policy February 2010 25 and related variants, uncertain issues, potential disrupttion and the likelihood of possible identified trends/issues.
resulting in a set of 36 uncertain issues and open questions in six thematic blocks (see Table 1). Experts were asked to assess the importance of each thesis in different dimensions (economic, scientific, society,
The following issues turned out to be the most controversial: IPRS: the relevance of the current IPR concept under changing conditions, new ways to protect IPR
and the issue of technical protection means like digital rights management systems; the structure of the creative content sector and the fundamental transformation process it is undergoinng of particular importance is the question of how new,
and the open issue of the likely development and importtanc of virtual worlds (like Second Life) and multiplayer online games (like World of Warcraft.
of the entire creative content market in Europe Political and legal issues Six theses, e g.
demographics and digital divide issues; and the role of ICT as enablers for ubiquitous creativity.
and further specification of our initial list of issues relevaan to the assessment of the impact of future sociotecchnoeconomic trends on the sustainability of the creative content sector.
Nevertheless, the workshop helped us identify the most important issues (usability, user empowermmen etc. which would lead to different outcoome depending on
Consequently, our impact assessment focused on four categories of issues (technology, regulatory, market and user related), each encompassing a number of sub-issues.
Key issues for the future success of the creative conteen industry Even though the scenarios reflect differrent often contradictory trends and uncertainties about the future of the creative content industry,
a number of important issues can be highlighted by looking across the scenarios. These issues may be technological,
regulatory, market-related, userrellate or of a broader societal nature. They will be decisive for the future pathway of the creative conteen sector.
By their very nature, the issues raised tend to be assessed in differing ways by the various actors in the creative content sector
However, in spite of the diversity of the various creative content sub-sectors, the convergence of digital content and media has given already way to a growing convergence of future issues in these subsecttors Many of the challenges
regulatory issues (e g. balance between monopoly and competition, digital rights; market-related issues (e g. development of new, sustainable business models;
and societal sustainability issues (e g. user empowermeent cultural diversity. Adaptive foresight in the creative content industries Science and Public policy February 2010 28 Step 5:
In fact many of the issues identified in our research relate to policy areas which are not specific to the R&d agenda,
Nonetheless, we feel that the issues identified are crucial to ensure a thriving European creative content sector in the future
Awarenees of the issues and challenges raised subsequently will be decisive for fulfilling this task. The policy issues that have been identified incllud fostering ICT and creative skills:
As to the adequacy of the methodology for shapiin a vision of the creative content sector as such, we can conclude that the process helped raise key issues and controversies relevant to the sector as depicted by the four scenarios.
market, regulatory, user-related and socieeta issues. For instance, the role of incumbents compared to that of user-based communities is seen differently by different stakeholders.
Recent developments regarding digital content copyrights will further influence the assessment of this issue. Another important example concerns content quality and,
even if the associated IPRS issues are still controversial. The next step, however, on the need for European research) policy action in these areas, would require looking at expected market and systte failures,
an issue that is difficult to address in view of the uncertainty characterising the sector. Adaptive foresight in the creative content industries Science and Public policy February 2010 30 With regard to the impact assessment aspect of the methodology
In this sense, addressing emergiin issues and their potential impact throughout all stages makes sense as it helps improve our understanndin step-by-step.
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