This presentation gives an introduction to Futures thinking and Foresight with the evolution of the practice and future prospects. Foresight is commonly used by national governments, international organisations and corporations to design long term futures and to formulate innovative strategies and actions.

1. Introduction to Foresight
“Designing scientifically possible, economically feasible and socially desirable futures”
Ozcan Saritas
osaritas@hse.ru

2. Some ‘drivers of change’
 Printing, gunpowder and the compass have changed the whole
face and state of things throughout the world... (Francis Bacon,
1620).
 Improvements in machinery go hand in hand with the division of
labor, and very pretty machines ... facilitate and quicken
production... (Adam Smith, 1776).
 The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing
the means of production! (Karl Marx, 1848).
 Knowledge is the chief engine of progress in the economy
(Alfred Marshall, 1897).
 The entrepreneur and his search for new combinations is the
driving force in all economic development... (Joseph
Schumpeter, 1911).
 Science and basic research are incredibly powerful sources of
future economic and societal development... (Vannevar Bush,
1945).
2

3. early Foresight…
• The existence of human on the earth surface: The act of
anticipation as an unavoidable human characteristic
• 16th to 18th centuries: To improve decision making and public debate
and to anticipate long-term trends and long-term implications of shortterm decisions. Wide scope & wide array of issues due to increasing
complexity of societies
• 19th century: The future of capitalist economies by classical political
economists. Following the industrial revolution: Fragmentation of social
studies - more focused and short term orientation of social sciences

4. Jean-Marc Côté's Visions of the Year 2000 (1899)
Foresight from the past
http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/category/1890s 4

5. Foresight – ’50s & ’60s
• ‘50s & ‘60s: The principles of trend extrapolation and social indicators,
and the methods of expert analysis (e.g. Delphi & cross-impact). First
computer simulations become well-known
• The efforts were called as forecasting – the activities concerned with
the probabilistic assessment of what is likely to happen in the
future
• Applications in military and large corporations
• The main focus areas were science and engineering
• Carried out with a participation of a limited group of experts and
futurologists

6. Foresight – ’50s & ’60s
United States
•
•
1950s - Early technology forecasting - development of main techniques
1960s - Large forecasting exercises by DOD, US Navy, Field surveys
(astronomy, life sciences)
– Very costly programmes
– Within a closed group – BOGSAT
– Limited participation

7. Foresight – ’50s & ’60s
Exploring Space (1958)
*The first woman in space was
Russian Valentina Tereshkova in 1963.
http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/category/1950s

8. Foresight – ’70s
• the 1970s
– Change in the understanding of forecasting due to the 1973 oilshock
– “Limits to Growth” (Meadows et al., 1972): simple trend analysis
was not enough to understand the complexity of the world, thus
– forecasting tended to be less deterministic
• The future is continued as not the extension of the past
• The underlying assumptions changed that discontinuities
occurred

9. Foresight – ’70s
Japan (National S&T Forecast)
• STA 30-year forecasts - to provide 'holistic' overview. Incorporate economic &
social needs as well as S&T advances. Forecasts normative as well as
predictive
Shell (Corporate Foresight)
• In the 1960s a pioneering team of economists, engineers and scientists had
started work on Shell’s first scenarios on how the future might unfold and the
impact this could have on the company. By 1973 they had shared these early
scenarios with Shell’s management, daring them to think the unthinkable:
What if the world faced an oil crisis?

10. Letter to the future (1976)
To the people of the year 2076,
In a hundred years I think the
world will be overpopulated and
people will have to live in
apartments to accommodate
for this. Everything will be able
to be recycled and what little
that can't will be shot out into
space.

11. Foresight – ’80s
•
Multiple futures
– Foresight: to express a wider frame to consider alternative futures and to
create actions to get to the desired goal
– La prospective: the multiplicity of the future
PRODUCT/
CODIFIED
OUTPUT
Mixed
PROCESS/
NETWORK, TACIT
OUTCOMES

12. Foresight – ’80s
• France: Experiments with Foresight (e.g. National Colloquium on Research &
Technology)
• Sweden, Canada, Australia: Initiatives by government ministries, research
funding agencies and industry - mixed experiences
• UK, Germany: Little or no foresight
• US
– Late 1980s - upsurge of interest in foresight due to concerns about
competitiveness. Foresight exercises to identify lists of 'Critical
Technologies' (such as by DOD, Dep't of Commerce, industrial associations)
• Netherlands
– Ministry of Economic Affairs - Foresight exercises
Ministry of Education and Science - Foresight Steering Committee
(+ Ministry of Agriculture - Foresight programme in 1990s)

13. Shopping in the future (1981)
A store of the future is more like a warehouse than a shop of
today. The robots serve people who call up the store on their
home computers. This robot is showing a bunch of bananas to a
video camera, which transmits a picture of the fruit to a customer.
It places the purchases in a box which is then delivered to the
customer's home.
http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/category/1980s

14. Foresight - ’90s
• Foresight for S&T policy making by government, industry and
other organisations
• The key elements of Foresight in the 1990s:
– S&T is central focus
– Systematic process
– Longer timeframe than in existing S&T planning
– S&T in relation to economic and social developments
• “Foresight is the process involved in systematically attempting to
look into the longer term future of science, technology, the
economy, and society with the aim of identifying areas of
strategic research and the emerging new technologies likely to
yield the greatest economic and social benefits” (Martin, 1995).

15. Foresight - ’90s
Germany
• ISI and BMFT Projektträeger
• 30-Year Delphi surveys of S&T - collaboration with Japan
• Other foresight exercises (regional, industrial etc.)
• Futur initiative – involvement of full range of stakeholders
France
• Ministry of Industry - identification of 'key technologies'
• Ministry for HE & Research - Delphi survey
• Other lower-level foresight e.g. at regional level
UK
• 1994-95 - National Technology Foresight Programme - identified 27 generic S&T
priorities + 18 infrastructure priorities
Process benefits substantial - addressed areas of UK weakness
• 1999-2000 - Second Foresight Programme
• 2002-date – new form of Foresight focusing on specific areas

16. Carnucopia (1993)
According to the company
Empruve, this futuristic
multimedia device from 1993,
"will become as much an
integral part of our lives as the
telephone, the television, the
typewriter and the book." The
photo and its caption (below)
were found in the
book Understanding
Hypermedia (Predicted price:
$4,000 and $5,000)
http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/category/1990s

17. Foresight – 2000s
• Change in the S&T dominated appearance with increasing
concerns on social aspects due to:
– The increasing importance of innovation (both
technological and organisational)
– The development of service economies.
Considerable portions of economic activity, employment
and output have started taking place in service sectors
of the economy
– Other developments including globalisation, changes
in demographic structures and in cultural practices, and
environmental affairs
– Recognition of the close relationship between S&T
and society

18. Foresight
• “the application of
– ‘systematic’,
– ‘participatory’,
– ‘future-intelligencegathering and medium-tolong-term vision building
process’ to
– ‘informing present-day
decisions and mobilising
joint actions’”

19. Foresight – 2000s
The evolution of Foresight is ongoing...
•
Foresight is distributed and embedded at multiple levels due to the
distributed nature of the innovation system. In a distributed system,
knowledge acquisition is much more about the ability (e.g. of a firm) to scan
and draw upon outside sources of technology and to manage partnerships.
•
The efforts are not centrally managed or controlled. This type of activity
does not refer to any single exercise (where the whole landscape was covered
in one single exercise) but rather to a landscape marked by a rich variety of
distributed exercises focused upon the visionary needs of particular
organisations, communities, spaces.
•
S&T is still a major area of activity of most programmes.

20. National Foresight – 2000s
Disconnection of
STI from socioeconomic problems
Lack of funding
for STI
Creative and disturbing
encouraging innovation
Links STI to wider issues
signalling its relevance
Short-term
thinking
Low industrial
STI intensity
Forward-looking building
future-proofing and agility
Weak STI planning
capabilities
Brain
drain
Disconnection of
science from
innovation
Little
interdisciplinarity
Discursive enabling
strategic conversations
System linkages
failures
Transparent structured process
providing legitimate priorities
Participative bringing
in new perspectives
Builds consensus increasing
likelihood of implementation
Implementation
failures

21. Regional Foresight – 2000s
•
Variable rationales. But some arguments for Regional Foresight include:
– Growing importance of regional identities and regions as social and
economic units
– Regions often lack the inclusive and forward-looking institutions to
cope with the profound changes they face
– Break-down barriers, articulate long-term visions, and explicate their
present-day implications

22. Corporate Foresight – 2000s
Some of the rationales for Corporate Foresight

Anticipatory intelligence, i.e. providing background
information and an early warning of recent developments

Direction setting, i.e. establishing broad guidelines for
the corporate strategy

Determining priorities, i.e. identifying the most
desirable lines of R&D as a direct input into specific
(funding) decisions

Strategy formulation, i.e. participating in the
formulation and implementation of strategic decisions

Innovation catalysing, i.e. stimulating and supporting
innovation processes between the different partners

23. Supra-national Foresight – 2000s
Supra-national (Regional) initiatives in the sense of Foresight initiatives taken by a group
of countries which together form a region.
Rationales:

24. European Foresight Monitoring Network (EFMN)
Foresight exercises per region
European Foresight Monitoring Network (EFMN, 2008)
24

25. Mapping of Foresight activities
EFMN (2008)
25

26. Sponsors & target audiences of Foresight
EFMN (2008)
26

27. Objectives of Foresight
EFMN (2008)
27

28. Sectors focused
28

29. Foresight methods used
EFMN (2008)
29

30. Foresight outputs
EFMN (2008)
30

31. Foresight – 2010s?
• New global context and new drivers of change
– Increased financial, trade and investment flows
– Rapid and accelerating technological progress;
ICTs, biotechnology, fuel cells, nanotechnologies
– New international regulations and standards on
trade, quality, labor, environment, intellectual
property rights
– New systems to design, produce, distribute, and
manage products and services
– Global value chains and production networks

33. Technological advancements

34. “Techno-school”
• Teaching how to learn
• Avatar teachers,
assistants
• Virtual reality supported
classes
• Learning by doing
• Assessment of the
“whole life experience”
without exams
• Career guidance based
on data analysis

35. “3-D shop”
• Create, scan, print
technology
• 3-D metal and
plastic printing
• Distributed, just-intime and clean
production
• Minimum storage
and logistics
• Energy efficient,
clean working and
living environment

36. “Eco-farm”
•
High technology
“precision farming”
•
Remotely operated
GPS-enabled vehicles /
equipments
•
Plant and soil sensors
•
Automated watering
and fertilizing
•
Enhanced food with
increased productivity
and increased nutrition
•
Consumer oriented
transparent production

37. “Future-office”
•
Foresight and creative
uncertainty management
•
Real time information
collection and decisionmaking technologies
•
Enhanced machines and
human
•
Pro-Technology vs. AntiTechnology movements
•
Socio-technological
studies
•
Digital arts and creativity

38. “Personal healthcare” practice
•
Personal Health
Systems (medicine,
electronics & ICTs)
•
Wearable technologies
•
Real time monitoring
systems with body
sensors
•
Automated prescription
systems
•
Healthy people, low
health expenditures

39. Foresight and systems
What is
feasible?
Technology
& Economics
What is
possible?
Science &
Ecology
Systemic
Foresight
What is
desirable?
Socioeconomics
Politics & Values

40. STEEPV
S
T
V
E
P
E
Foresight

41. Contexts of Foresight
Social
system
Technological
system
Economic
system
Ecological
system
Political
system
Values

42. Key questions to be answered
 What kind of developments will occur?
 Which ones of them could be beneficial and which ones
harmful?
 How soon may these developments occur?
 What might be the first signs that these developments are
happening?
 Where and how might the leading indications of impeding
change be seen?
 Who is in a position anywhere to observe these indications?
 What is worth to minimise the extent of surprise introduced by
these indications?
 Who needs to know about these impending changes?
42

43. Foresight vs. Forecasting
 What kind of developments will occur?
 Which ones of them could be beneficial and which ones
harmful?
 How soon may these developments occur?
 What might be the first signs that these developments are
happening?
 Where and how might the leading indications of impeding
change be seen?
 Who is in a position anywhere to observe these indications?
 What is worth to minimise the extent of surprise introduced by
these indications?
 Who needs to know about these impending changes?
43

44. Systemic Foresight methodology


Intelligence
Imagination
Impact

Interaction

Integration
Intervention
Interpretation
Ref: Saritas, O. (2013). Systemic Foresight Methodology,
Foresight and Science, Technology and Innovation Policies:
Best Practices, D. Meissner, L. Gokhberg, and A. Sokolov and
eds. Springer Verlag, Berlin, pp. 83-117.


Intelligence
– Creates shared understanding and mutual
appreciation of issues at hand
Imagination
– The input from scanning is synthesised into
conceptual models of the situations involved in the
real world
Integration
– Analyses the alternative models of the future and
‘prioritises’ them, through intensive negotiations
among system actors and stakeholders, to create an
agreed model of the future
Interpretation
– Translates future visions into long-, medium-, and
short-term actions for a successful change
programme
Intervention
– Creates plans to inform present day decisions for
immediate change to provide structural and
behavioural transformations
Impact
– Assesses the results and impacts of Foresight
exercise, learns from experience and
provides
input for next round

45. Systemic Foresight Methodology
Commonly used Methods
(Saritas, 2013)

46. Foresight journal
Editor: Ozcan Saritas
www.emeraldinsight.com/fs.htm
46

47. osaritas@hse.ru