A group support system for foresight processes

Abstract

The preparation of research and technology development (RTD) programs calls for the analysis of prospective technological advances and the consideration of 'lessons learned' from earlier programs. In this paper, we report experiences from a pilot project in which an internet-based survey and five participatory workshops were organised in conjunction with a Finnish RTD program in telecommunications. At these workshops, leading representatives from industry and the research community were invited to report their experiences from a concluding RTD program and to address future research needs, whereby they were assisted by a group support system (GSS). The workshop process was well received, which suggests that the preparation of RTD efforts can benefit from the deployment of GSS tools in support of face-to-face discussions. To our knowledge, this is the first account on GSS use in the foresight context.

Multicriteria methods for technology foresight

“…A potential drawback of face-to-face meetings is that the most vocal and persuasive participants may have excessive influence on the results. This possibility can be partly circumvented through group support systems (GSS) which enable anonymous communication in face-to-face meetings (Bana e Costa et al, 1999;Bongers et al, 2000;Geurts and Joldersma, 2001;Salo and Gustafsson, 2002).…”

Group Support Systems Features and Their Contribution to Technology Strategy Decision-Making: A Review and Analysis

“…The context-based or open foresight [51] is an emerging foresight paradigm that puts more emphasis in communication and creativity among relevant stakeholders inside organizations. In line with this paradigm, GSS may contribute with greater collaboration among a larger number of actors with different perspectives, for raising a higher number of ideas and validating them [40], thus supporting communication and gathering of anonymous feedback and their aggregation in collective insights about technological, economic and societal developments [38] and in the establishment of rules of order in decisions through facilitated group discussions [39]. The web-based system proposed by Spithourakis et al [42] combines features of forecasting, such as descriptive statistics, with the "soft" factors of foresight to improve user experience and gather a better knowledge about a problem.…”

Foresight and governance: a problem‐oriented methodology (GOVSIGHT)

“…On the contrary, the objective of using the foresight approach to support the governmental policy making implies a demand-oriented methodology (Salo and Gustafsson, 2002;Van der Meulen and Lo¨nenberg, 2001), focusing societal problems and compromising between long-term decision making and short-term complexity or uncertainty (Alvarez-Miranda and Fontela, 1980). This approach will improve the relationship between science or technology and society (MCT et al, 2002) and should be oriented for the new paradigm of development based on knowledge (Dosi, 1998) as it is well expressed by the conclusions of the EU Strategy of Lisbon (March 2000): to achieve 'the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion' (Tavares, 2000).…”