Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the future prospects of innovative services linked to sustainable energy systems. Design/methodology/approach – Service perspective is examined in the context of socio-technical transition and linked to the bottom-up and top-down social processes that foster sustainability. The foresight method applied is trend analysis. Findings – Two groups of trends were identified: the trends driven by technological development and the trends focussing on societal, managerial and consumer issues. The former consists of renewable energy sources, hybrid solutions, smart grids and smart energy markets. The latter involves distributed energy production, demand response, optimisation of sustainability and the role of energy as an opportunity and as service. The study reveals that energy is increasingly understood as a comprehensive and tailor-made service solution for communities and individual households. Consumers will enter the energy market as active participants; it raises the need for many types of services. Research limitations/implications – Deepening of understanding is required in several topics of this study, and more formal methods of foresight are needed to test the generalisability of its qualitative results. Practical implications – More effective policy measures are needed for fostering new services and social and system innovations in the area of sustainable energy. Innovation management practices should be developed in these areas. Originality/value – The paper aims to narrow the research gap linked to foresight in services by examining services in the area of sustainable energy systems – one of the “grand challenges” today.

The article proposes a systemic and future-oriented evaluation approach designed to support decision-making in complex socio-technical environments. The approach integrates established methods of evaluation, foresight, impact assessment, system dynamic modelling and societal embedding within a single framework to provide versatile information to increase strategic intelligence in decision-making. This generic and flexible framework aims to support decisionmaking in various policy and decision-making situations. It is designed to meet the challenges of the changing innovation environment.

National innovation systems and policies are confronted by many interrelated factors, including large socio-economic structural problems, globalisation, pressure to provide public research funding and changes in research communities driven by the Mode 2 paradigm. These changes challenge sectoral public research organisations (PROs). The role of universities and other policy organisations in innovation policy has been studied at length but there has been little investigation of PROs, despite their significance in developed and developing economies. This article fills this gap by exploring PROs in Finland, an open, industrialised and export-dependent economy. It draws several conclusions about the current state and future prospects of PROs in Finland. PROs are in transition in terms of their organisational, managerial and funding structures and their role in the internationalising national innovation system. Their rationale, legitimacy and strategies are also changing due to national innovation driven missions and internationalisation strategies. All PROs in Finland now engage in international cooperation. However, despite increasing funding from international sources and the globalisation of many aspects, PROs are still national organisations subject to national policies and governed by national bodies. Finnish PROs need to redefine their strategies at the international and European levels without forgetting their national role.

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