Synopsis: Level:


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(or tangible) outputs like reports and websites. 2 We can also observe an increasing interest in foresight activities that aim at supporting strategy formation both at the collective level and at the level of individual organisations.

and innovation thatwas blessed by the highest political levels. In fact, when the research programme was started at the end of 2004,

The short-term counselling effects of the process were dependent on the level of interaction and networking that could be achieved in the course of the process.

What seems to be necessary is either a full backing from the top level of the city's administration

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.


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and goals should be anchored in/embedded on all levels of the municipality plan. 11 Thus the resulting visions were defined already as those desired by the political leadership of the municipality of Lundal.


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On another level, the Dutch government allocates research support to universities based in part upon their publication records.


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In addition to one-of-a-kind exercises, important elements of foresight activity are ingrained in policy processes at the highest level of decision making:

and the level of ambition of large-scale national exercises elsewhere (for example, in Hungary, France, Germany and United kingdom, see Havas 2003;

and to facilitate the development of meaningful priorities at an appropriate level of aggregation. The following key concepts and templates were employed in Finnsight:


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which analysed content driven Knowledge dynamics on the one hand and the development of institutional and governance arrangements on the meso-and macro-level of research (national and post-national) on the other.

Hence, this research is expected to contribute improving the strategic processes of priority setting in technoinstittutiona arenas both on the national and international level.

Experiences from the vertical R&i coordination between local, regional and (international levels provide insights into the challenges of managing multilayered innovation systems 23.

We suggest to extend this concept to the European level complemented by a thematic perspective focussing on a given field of research area.

and (2) implementing the processes of funding to allocate resources to the research performers, at institutional, research group or individual level;

Whereas the Futuris work has been focussed on the national level for analysing The french R&i system we will mainly consider here the institutional arrangements which are governing/organising public R&i system at the European level assuming that relevant thematic research

This choice does not mean that the national and regional levels are not to be taken into consideration.

At European level, strategic policy orientation takes place, firstly in the context of the process of elaboration of the EU research budget, mainly the framework programme,

At European level, the arena of programming of research refers in the fist place to the coordination work performed by various directorates of the European commission for translating macroobjecctive (global amount allocated of resources along key orientations) set in the EU budget into thematic priorities along A. Schoen et al./

and programming calls at the European level encompass also the work carried out by the new European research Council (ERC) and by intermediary coordinating institutions like ERA NETS, European Technology platforms (ETPS) and Joint Technology initiatives (JTIS)

which are organising research agenda at transnational levels are also to be considered as contributing to the programming of research.

At European level, the strategic orientation of plant genomics is led by de facto industry. The European Technology platform (ETP)‘‘Plants for the Future''is a stakeholder forum for the plant sector,

and European level as the reference document for the orientation of research in this area. Two other key elements are contributing to the future of this research field.

doc, word, person or institution levels. Growth network dimension Growth pattern relative position of clusters within the network Complementarities-relations within the network Cognitive Technical Institutional Journals network Number of journals Citations

and programming arena by a stronger institutional steering on EU level. 5. 2. The case of Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (N&n) Nanosciences and Nanotechnologies (N&n) are seen as the‘top-down'miniaturisation movement of three domains:

Research programmes share fundamental explanations but diverge on lower level hypotheses or experimental techniques/objects 47.

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


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writing in strategy+business 1, refers to these new types and levels of risk as interdependent risks.

Employees from all levels of the organization, from CEO on down, participate in the process of submitting abstracts and attending Scan meetings.


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At a basic level a priority is simply an activity which is preferred over another. Normally it is encountered in the context of resource allocation,

Level of granularity: Typical lists that emerge are at a high level of aggregation (ICT, biotechnology, nanotechnology, etc.

or at one level down listing around 100 key technologies. Functional priorities are normally far fewer in number

and might typically concern resourcing (finance, human resources and infrastructure) for science, and industry science linkages.

At one level this shows a successful transition away from large emphases on energy in FP1 and ICT in FP2. 3 However

which it is used systematically to support these processes is probably at a fairly low level. 3. Structural foresight As the analysis of motivations showed,

and Kuhlmann 31, serving the function of enhancing the capability of innovation systems for self-organisation and raising the level of analysis for innovation policy to the system level.

The type of deficiencies that innovation policy seeks to correct include lack of integration also at the level of the policy framework itself,

At the level of the firm there are problems of short-term and reactive thinking caused by a preoccupation with immediate business problems


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Foresight activities in Asian countries are conducted in different levels, such as national level, regional level, sector level and firm's level.

T. Ko nno la et al.//Futures 43 (2011) 252 264 262 3. 5. Innovations foresight (diverse perspectives and instrumental outcomes) Innovations foresight can be characterised as instrumental processes with diverse


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This reflectsawareness that it isimpossible foroneall-knowing policy organisation or level of government to grasp all of the intelligence that is needed to make sense of future challenges and opportunities.

one is essentially ontological is known the knowledge at the individual level only, at the group level,

or inter-organisation levels? and the other is more epistemological is the knowledge tacit or explicit?


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since the nature of the relationship could change depending on performance levels. One example is the nonlinear relationship of an inverted U,

which suggests there would be an optimal level of social environmental performance reflecting intuitive logic that improvements in environmental

and initiatives at the global level have been taken. 7. Discussion: FTA in support of new forms of governance Governance methods and systems have not been institutionalised on a broad and continuous basis possibly

At the same time, which FTA METHODS and processes could contribute to enlarge societal participation in development strategies (at local, regional, national and international levels?

/Futures 43 (2011) 279 291 288 community's readiness to address global issues and to building governance at a global level.


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innovations and business-institutional strategies 6. A critical concept associated with being a driver is the level of uncertainty.

According to the survey respondents the majority of trends identified contain medium to high level possibility of controversy.

Almost all respondents from all regions considered that there is a medium to high level of occurrence of the trends identified. 75%of the North american respondents considered that the likelihood of occurrence was high,

North american and EU respondents considered the level of controversy medium. This distribution and differentiation could be a result of how recent technology challenges such as genetically modified organisms have attracted more intense controversy in Europe than in other regions

who expect low level of controversy. 3. 2. 3. Drivers of change The main orientations of the drivers are represented with the following radar diagram.

whereas the rest expect medium level of impact. Likelihood and time horizon assessment. The majority of respondents from Academia and NGOS expected a medium level of likelihood of occurrence for the drivers identified.

On the contrary, the respondents from Government, Business, and other Table 3 Examples of drivers. Examples of critical drivers by category A b c Society & Culture 46 Increased citizen participation with the help of collaborative Web tools International mobility of educated workforce improves cultural

sea levels prompt large infrastructure restructuring Geopolitics & Security 8 Europe becomes the most competitive economy in the world WW3 Nanotechnology and

NGOS and Students were identical, where about 52%of the respondents suggested medium level of likelihood. 50%of the respondents from Government and Business stated high likelihood of occurrence.


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Promoting Action for Sustainability Through Indicators at Local Level in Europe), INTELCITIES (IST-FP6) and REFORM (Rok-FP6),


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how to reduce the level of uncertainty while at the same time acknowledging that uncertainty is limitless. A literature review carried out in context of the EU funded transport project OPTIC (see DLR and KIT,

that differentiating between different levels of uncertainty appears to be a promising approach. Positions differ on such typologies of uncertainties and the relationship between knowledge types and uncertainty.

one must be aware that different levels of knowledge exist. The authors differentiate between four levels;

two of them are subcategories of so-called‘‘deep uncertainties.''''The latter ones are similar to the third category that Sven Ove Hansson (1996) has added to the discussion of uncertainty.‘‘

Against this background, we propose to differentiate between three levels of knowledge (as also presented in Table I:

as a quantitative characterization of adverse effects in terms of the probability of its occurrence and the level of its impacts VOL. 14 NO. 4 2012 jforesight jpage 285 nodes that are interlinked.

In relation to the typology of levels of knowledge described in chapter 2 it can be concluded that models are focussed mainly on improving knowledge in the field of knowns.

But we will focus here on some examples related to the methods used and the levels in uncertainties in the process.


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and evaluate the policy instruments deployed to promote variation 4. Identify alternative policy options that can minimize the impacts from the any identified risks 4. Remove the barriers that hinder the adoption of these strategies 4. Incorporate feedback from the‘‘grassroots''level


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as well as reducing the emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 80 per cent from 1990 levels.

Results and policy implications The final results of the foresight process were four scenarios that all fulfil the targets of reducing GHG emissions by at least 80 per cent from the 1990's levels

New houses and buildings in rural areas either passive or plus-energy houses and/or relying on renewables At the 2008 level

remarked on that occasion that it was a major breakthrough achievement to have committed Finland to reducing its emissions to a sustainable level by at least 80 per cent from the 1990 level by 2050.

possibility of degrowth economy (since wellbeing was considered to be at least on the present levels, this would mean that in the future wellbeing is defined in a different fashion from today) was presented in scenario B. In the final publication of the results of the scenario process this notion was replaced with stable growth.


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the level of the research groups, the technological field and the society. This three-level framework allows the analyst to study different perspectives of a specific case

and at the same time retain overview of the situation. By applying it to a particular application in nanotechnology,

Here we will present a three-level framework that does just this. In this paper we will address the issue how useful assessments can be made, given the enormous,

expectations and agenda building. 4 We distinguish various interrelated levels where variation and selection occur:(

and (iii) more global and diffuse, in society at large (see Fig. 3). The vertical dimension lists the three levels of aggregation.

The first level deals with research groups. Here, research is done at very specific subjects. The second level refers to a 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999

2000 2001 2002 Fig. 1. Number of times dnanotubet is mentioned in article titles (Picarta. 3 The fact that we use the emergence of this specialised journal for this paper is the fact that nanotubes is one of the major topics in this journal.

The third level relates to the societal level, where governments, NGO's and other societal actors articulate the social, political and economic aspects of the new technological field.

Note that the levels are interrelated dynamic and. In addition, each level will have its own timescales: changes at societal level have a slower pace than at the level of individual research groups 7. Fig. 2 shows

what questions should be raised in order to address the particular cell in the matrix and Fig. 3 gives typical sources to address the questions.

By answering these questions empirically, main findings can be distilled. Subsequently, from these findings emerging irreversibilities can be derived.

The company plays an important role in the development of nonvolatile memories based on nanotubes. 3. 1. Tracing dynamics of expectations The three levels in the framework can be specified in relation to the case.

Therefore, we name the level of the research group: nanotubes used in nonvolatile memories, the level of the technological field;

nanotubes in electronic devices, the level of the society; and nanotubes as part of nanotechnology. Such a case specific typology gives a focus for each level

and is therefore useful to distinguish what the boundaries are of the case. 3. 1. 1. Society The scientific developments,

and understanding of nanotubes production and characteristics13 have led to expectations on the level of the society.

Concluding, the expectations on the societal level show a contradiction in the sense that on the one hand nanotubes are used without regulation

Second, at the level of the EU, a 6th framework programme has been approved. The Nanosafe project assesses the risks involved in the production

At the level of the society we observed open discussions on different topics. This indicates a growing attention for various aspects related to nanotubes as part of nanotechnology.

This at the societal level held discourse is marked as an emerging irreversibility. Nanotubes as part of nanotechnology Societal discourse on nanotubes Nanotubes as part of nanotechnology Societal discourse on nanotubes Nanotubes in electronic devices Recognition of a specific set of promising applications Nanotubes

the levels in the three-level framework are interrelated. A few examples from the case where this is visible will now be highlighted.

basic scientific results at the level of the research groups can influence the level of the technological field,

Second, sentiments at the societal level might influence the possibilities for the electronic industry to develop technologies that might receive negative publicity.

when a certain technology is received positively at the societal level. 4. Conclusions and discussion In this paper we proposed a route to deal with the intrinsic uncertainties of a new emerging field like nanotechnology.

The three-level framework makes it possible to gather findings of these first indications. As nanotechnology is still in the early phases of development

The three-level framework allows the analyst to study different perspectives of a specific case and at the same time retain overview of the situation.

insights are gained about the dynamics within the three levels and how the levels interact. These insights are valuable for understanding the dynamics of a particular technology

and help to trace emerging irreversibilities in the early phases of technological development. Acknowledgements The authors of this paper would like to thank Arie Rip, Ruud Smits, Ulrich Fiedeler and Nik Brown for their valuable comments.

and to view them in light of the dynamics at the separate levels. In addition the results and insights that are gained by applying CTA tools in practice can be fed back into theories of technology dynamics.


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formulated at various administrative levels, and it is geared to satisfy the real estate demands of citizens, business and institutions.

The first one is related to the high level of complexity and turbulence that will characterise our cities in the twenty-first Century.

At the national level, solidarity amongst regions has deteriorated significantly due to resistance by the wealthiest territories to share their profits with their least developed counterparts.

public policies regarding urban development are decentralised very much at the regional and local level. Regional governments play a clear role in setting territorial strategies,

In Scenario A, there are significant improvements in the governance model at the local level. Progress is reflected by transparent decision-making, effective public participation, public-private co-operation and better coordination among different levels of administration.

The existence of strong social capital permits a decentralised democratic system. This model requires a strong set of management skills in all public organisations to guide participation and coordination actions.

and implementing urban sustainable policies at the regional and local level, European and national public agents have taken over policy making.

Level of fertility at which a population exactly replaces itself from one generation to the next

Suggested strategies for Scenario C. The back to basics scenario is dominated by a high level of social frustration due to a longstanding economic recession and the lack of an adequate response by previous governments.


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and international levels, including both the public and private spheres. The legal scenarios thus set out to be global and systemic.

composed of three levels: the techno-socioeconomic‘‘flight simulator''(also termed as‘‘Living Earth Simulator'')a‘‘Planetary Nervous system,

''PAGE 340 jforesight jvol. 14 NO. 4 2012 While the‘‘Living Earth Simulator''will‘‘require the development of interactive decentralized supercomputing that scales up to global level systems

At a more general level, the increasing availability of information in electronic form and the computing techniques and processes for exploiting such data constitute the most recent methodological developments in the field of FTA.

At a general level, the application of fta to legal research constitutes an appeal to the creativity of the researcher and to the realisation of the full potential of his or her academic freedom.


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This poses new challenges for roadmapping methodology in terms of level of aggregation and timeframe. D 2005 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

and structuring to an industrial production level or about the health and environmental hazards that actually can arise from nanomaterials,


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In response to these crises, he saw a need for new forms of dialogue at different levels,

He concluded that there is a lack of critical thinking at epistemological and ontological levels in particular, and too much of a business-as usual mentality (Hames 2011b).

in order to achieve coherence among network partners in progressing towards higher levels of sustainability. They argue that, in addition to governments

3. It consists of four levels: the litany, social causes, discourse/worldviewand myth/metaphor. Inayatullah (1998) argues that,


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the levels of certainty and rationality could be increased by better evidence and knowledge, and progress can be measured against an ideal of perfect knowledge.

the higher levels provide the context for lower level meaning. At the level of goal-oriented acts, progress may be defined as successful problem-solving,

evaluated in the context of a specific social activity. At the Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 04:52 03 december 2014 742

Although the Bergsonian élan can be rather opportunistic, at social and cognitive levels, it is driven also by an internally generated push, for example,

In the second act, an organ that has unintended the capability for mapping levels of light with directions of bodily movement emerges.

In the activitytheooreti hierarchy, the focus of change is on the operational level as new ways of doing old things.

On a theoretical level, the lack of predefined ontological blueprints means that weak signals cannot in any straightforwaar way be interpreted in a realist context,

A similar three-level structure emerges when we analyse the communicative meaning of sentences. We cannot derive the communicative meaning of a sentence by adding up word definitions,


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a high level of perception and awareness of the relevant components of the situation. Persons of thought were the conventional experts who had deep knowledge of matters relating to a particular component of the situation or of a tightly related set of components.

and Loveridge (1982)) that permitted an understanding of their level of expertise. The headings of the self-assessment criteria were:(

Verbal equivalents to different probability levels (Alpert and Raiffa 1982) were used during this part of the elicitation to seed the interviewee's thinking processes.

A for confidence levels and P for the pedigree of the number, that is, where and how was generated it


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and will vary in level, content and modality (Konrad 2006). The level of expectations may range from encompassing, abstract sketches of the future (macro) to detailed elements (micro.

In terms of content, expectations may concern technical, commercial or societal aspects, and probably in a mix of these.


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and companies competed for market share at the international level. The boundaries between the micro and macro environments were blurred in these industries;

These were built via a top-down process that started at corporate level, by first taking into account the global economy

and mobility business and are carried out at a global level or for a specific region over a 10 15-year perspective.

At the market level, more focused scenarios are built and take into account the likely competitive moves of rivals

seen as likely to undermine general profitability levels. Future pharmaceutical R&d activities also promised to require huge investmennts so implying that resources had to be shifted from other, more attractive, business areas.

At business and operational levels, strategic foresight supports the definition of target features for enhancing products and services,


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with the support of FTA, achieving influence among their partners to progress towards higher levels of sustainable development,

It offers the possibility for each firm to assess its position regarding five maturiit levels for sustainable development.

it may also influence partners in their progress towards higher levels of sustainable development. The Maturity Model suggested in Table 3 (Cagnin 2005) uses the notion of evolution in

but also enable all actors within such networks to progress towards higher levels of sustainable development. What one part does to another is interpreted indefinitely

or for moving the whole system towards higher levels of sustainable development. Dialogue and information-sharing, founded on trust,

These might be the necessary characteristics to enable actors within business networks to perform at higher levels

and preparing the whole network to walk into a higher sustainability maturity level 5th Maturity Level Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:04 03 december 2014 812 C. Cagnin


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Clearresearch produces link analyses at multiple levels of detail. The steps involved in producing these maps are as follows:!

and understood at many levels of detail. Details about any data record are also available upon demand.

The first level of analysis consisted of identifying relationships between technologies and multiple IAS. The relationships exposed by this analysis were intended to reveal potential overlapping

N. Rahal/Technological forecasting & Social Change 72 (2005) 1122 1136 1130 The first level of analysis identified a macroscale understanding of the overlaps as well as the unique competencies and capabilities that each IA possessed.

The second level of analysis consisted of the identification of specific relationships between IAS. Fig. 5 depicts a very strong relationship between EP and MST.

The third level of analysis consisted of a technology-to-technology relationship assessment within a single IA.

but that different approaches offer different perspectives and levels of detail that can each be of benefit to the analyst or manager.


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There are three basic temporal levels that condition the strategic development path of an organisation:(1) the future development options in the context of anticipated and unknown challenges,(2) the past decisions that affect the organisation either explicitly or implicitly,

and wider currents at the level of the strategic landscape. For example, Smits and Kuhlmann (2004,11) argue that innovation is a systemic activity that‘involves a variety of actions within the system,

At the strategic level, the structural openness enables the combination of these different temporal dimensions.

Process-based roadmapping is a scalable method that can be used to study the micro-level for example,

This visual emphasis enables the use of roadmaps as crystallised strategy charts that open simultaneous perspectives both on macro-level currents

The roadmap scope (below) refers to the level at which the roadmap is aimed. Scope is a more traditional insight into roadmapping methodology that separates, for example, technology roadmaps and market roadmaps.

This space is devoted to the exploration of futures on different levels of plausibility. Our model starts with a presupposition that in the technology and social/actor spaces

The building services roadmap was constructed through two roadmap levels. The first level was a metaroadmap that crystallised the project's results.

The metaroadmap formed an umbrella for the second level thematic subroadmaps. Knowledge spaces and systemic capacities The building services roadmap can be perceived as an R&d

I type of technology roadmap that is aimed to contribute to the technology space and the social/actor space.

It focussed on building a policy-level perspective for Nordic-level developmeent The systemic policy orientation distinguishes Nordic ICT Foresight from the three previous examples.

Creation of four context scenarios on the adoption of ICT in four Nordic countries Building system-level strategic

and fostered systemleeve strategic abilities at the level of the Nordic region. In addition, the project built a systematic set of actions in the medium and long term

and even towards fostering a visionary innovation Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:05 03 december 2014 838 T. Ahlqvist et al. culture at the level of nation-states.

Futures of the ICT environment and applications on the Nordic level. Helsinki: VTT Publications, Edita Prima Oy.

Futures of the ICT environment and applications on the Nordic level. Summary report. Publication of Nordic Innovation Centre.


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