The paper shows that concepts applied to biological evolution are applicable, through useful metaphors, to economics and technology assessment.
Using the metaphor of landscape, The affordance structure is in the situation, and frames possibilities for action
The metaphor of landscape is useful why climb over steep mountains, if you can follow a path through a valley
i e. the extent to which the scenarios build on existing metaphors and beliefs. Finally, trust in dissemination is important,
The notions of‘situations'and Critical systems Heuristics (CSH) are combined into a metaphor to suggest how the deficit in Foresight might be reduced.
The subjective nature of the metaphors assists the interpretation of these suggestions. The notion of‘situations'and Critical systems Heuristics (CSH) represents an attempt to provide a metaphorical foundation for Inclusive foresight.
The current paper discusses the application of the‘situation'cum CSH metaphor for the case of nanoscience,
The cascade's fuzzy boundaries will be subject to intense philosophical debate that has much to learn from Dempster's sympoiesis. 4. 1. Evolution of a metaphor Inclusive foresight is
its metaphor then needs to: Identify boundaries for the heuristic as a judgmental process Assemble alternative systems contexts for appreciating dynamically a situation and its content,
The meaning of a metaphor in the present context is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object
Here the metaphor is an analogy to what might unwisely be called a theory for Inclusive foresight.
which to begin to build a metaphor based on twelve categories of heuristics grouped into four categories of intention as shown in Fig. 2 (overleaf) 22.
but have been modified here to be appropriate to the development of a metaphor for Inclusive foresight. There are some obvious linkages to behavioural matters.
The intentions of Inclusive foresight form the basis of a metaphor and can be described in the following way. 4. 1. 1. Motivation 1. Inclusivity ought to be serve as the way in
and forms the basis of the Motivation part of the Inclusive foresight metaphor. The Sources of Knowledge part of the metaphor draws attention to the use of the term nano artifacts.
An artifact is an artificial product, physical or nonphysical, of any kind that depends on the systemic interaction between nanoscience, nano-technology and the artifacts themselves for their evolution into desirable artifacts:
(which includes services as artifacts) that links these aspects to the public and corporate worlds, a further component of the Sources of Knowledge part of the metaphor.
The seven principles of the Code are aligned well the metaphor for inclusiveness as intended in this paper as a way of ameliorating the deficit.
Public acceptance of corporate activity is interlinked with public participation as intended in the metaphor. Each of the four categories in the metaphor is relevant to the interlinking between the public acceptance of corporate activity and public Fig. 3. Interaction between scientific possibility
technological feasibility and artifact desirability of a nano artifact. 1218 D. Loveridge, O. Saritas/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1208 1221 participation in Foresight relating to these issues.
of which featured in the earlier discussion of inclusiveness. 6. Epilogue The paper has described a metaphor for Inclusive foresight rather than to be a definitive exposition of future situations
and briefly sets out how the metaphor relates to nano artifacts and their enabling sciences, and technologies.
which the metaphor for Inclusive foresight can be tested. Some of these steps have been described by Loveridge and Street 3 but much remains to be done capitalising wherever possible on the experience built up in the German Futur programme.
the metaphor of the innovation journey has been used; it refers to the complex twists and turns in the emergence of a new product 5. Innovation is characterized nonlinear,
Other characteristics such as shifts and branches are linked also with the metaphor, and are considered part and parcel of the actor-network that carries the innovation as well as the broader landscape which overtime shifts.
hence the van de ven metaphor is very useful here. 8 The IC+diagram broadens the value chain model
according to the pictorial metaphor described in Appendix. However, the current practices of the FTA are not deep enough to understand
The foregoing are shown in the uppermost layer of the pictorial metaphor (see Appendix) and illustrate how FTA is embedded in the background to the influences globalisation and glocalisation on the three pillars of corporate and industrial activity,
Appendix A The following diagrams set out the metaphor that underlies the discussion in the text.
The stages in the evolution of the metaphor are shown in the first two diagrams: the entire metaphor is illustrated in the final diagram (Figs.
A. 1 A. 3).(TD$FIG Fig. A. 1. The three pillars. TD$FIG Fig. A. 2. Background to the three pillars.
A. 3. The entire metaphor. C. Cagnin et al.//Futures 43 (2011) 279 291 290 35 M. E. Porter, M. R. Kramer, The competitive advantage of corporate philanthropy, Harvard Business Review (2002.
employs reframing at the deep myth/metaphor level. 4. Results policy making implications We all have our favourite story of a failed
the litany, social causes, discourse/worldviewand myth/metaphor. Inayatullah (1998) argues that, ‘the challenge is to conduct research that moves up and down the layers of analysis
We may illustrate the expansionary character of this process using alpinism as a metaphor. When a mountaineer climbs a mountain face, at each hold,
In their original depiction of natural drift, Maturana and Varela (1988, chap. 5) described the process of evolution using a metaphor of water drops rolling down from the top of a mountain.
what are believed commonly to be the metaphors from foresight, forecasting and technology assessment: all have a long history and an equally long and growing catalogue of techniques to use:
As an aside, these agreed metaphors are construed often as theory while a parallel search for a philosophical cum theoretical basis for FTA is pursued outside the cohort of practitioners.
methodological issues and metaphors FTA assumes that its processes have an innate capability to deal with dynamic situations made up of many interconnected themes, each
representations of the opinions and beliefs of their designers (4) The commonly believed metaphors of foresight,
www. gartner. com. Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:02 03 december 2014 Navigating foresight in a sea of expectations 777‘niche'has been introduced to denote this protection (Vergragt 1988) and traces back to the evolutionary metaphor
To continue the nautical metaphor: in order to navigate foresight in the sea of expectations, one needs both clear sight as well as a compass.
It uses a landscape metaphor and portrays the structure of the space as peaks and ridges of documents.
The role of embodied metaphors. Long Range Planning 41, no. 3: 309 25. Kostoff, R. N.,R. Boylan,
accepted 6 october 2004 Abstract It is well known the fact that the world of technology is full of biological metaphors,
are useful metaphors in the realm of economics, business and technology assessment. But few people realize that the inverse is also a common usage:
the more useful is the resort to metaphors. That is evidently the case of the theory of evolution itself:
we evoke metaphors in both ways, from the biological to the social and also in the other way around, from the social to the biological.
Theorizing about the evolutionary (Darwinian) aspects of technological change is then not merely a question of using metaphors and making analogies,
Biology, or perhaps more generally, biosciences, is not merely a good source of metaphors, but historically it was,
more than an useful metaphor One of the most powerful technological forecasting tools, the logistic equation, has its origin in the biological realm
The Roles of Metaphors in Science, University of Illinois Press, 2003.5 P. Corning, Nature's Magic:
a Chinese idiom, is a‘slogan'metaphor among Chinese science policy-makers, meaning‘go forward with your head in the clouds and the feet on the ground'.
The role of embodied metaphors',Long Range Planning, 41: 309 25. Kostoff, R. N. and Schaller, R. R. 2001)‘ Science and technoloog roadmaps',IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, 48: 132 43.
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