Foresighting for inclusive development

Abstract

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Innovation Systems for Transformations towards Sustainability? Taking the Normative Dimension Seriously

“…Another way to introduce goal-orientation in IS is innovation systems foresight, recently proposed by Andersen and Andersen [182,183]. Innovation systems foresight is defined as a "systemic, systematic, participatory, future-intelligence-gathering and medium-to-long-term vision-building process aimed at present-day decisions and mobilising joint actions to improve innovation system performance with the ultimate goal of improving desirable socio-economic performance" [182] (p. 281).…”

“…Innovation systems foresight is defined as a "systemic, systematic, participatory, future-intelligence-gathering and medium-to-long-term vision-building process aimed at present-day decisions and mobilising joint actions to improve innovation system performance with the ultimate goal of improving desirable socio-economic performance" [182] (p. 281). This framework has been developed on the basis of foresight and futures studies and has already served as a tool for strategically guiding IS transformations towards desirable directions [183].…”

“…Due to the simple fact that policy-makers are not perfectly informed social planners, policy-making should be distributed. Furthermore, including key stakeholders becomes a necessary and integral part of innovation policies [183]. Aside from the substantive value of participation [191], mobilizing many actors at multiple scales can create legitimacy in general [192,193] and for sustainability goals [19,81,194,195] of an IS in particular.…”

Quantitative Foresighting as a Means of Improving Anticipatory Scientific Capacity and Strategic Planning

“…It rests on two key assumptions: (1) that the future is not determined and (2) that decisions taken today can affect the future, and hence, action can change outcomes. 26 Foresighting exercises may lead to development of multiple non-exclusive scenarios and a set of corresponding responses. It most often involves a systematic, participatory, vision-building process to capture existing knowledge to uncover possible future paths for discussion.…”

“…Strategic planning involves creating a vision, setting goals, and determining resource allocation and other actions to pursue those goals; 31 planning by organizations or sectors aimed at improving the long-term effectiveness of operations; commonly based on some form of macro-environmental analysis of social, technological, and political trends, or scenarios which narrate internal and external drivers for future development 32,33 Foresighting 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 the areas of strategic research and the emerging of generic technologies likely to yield the greatest economic and social benefits; 34 the purpose of foresight is to imagine different futures and their consequences and, on that basis, to engage in informed decision making. Foresight thus rests on two key assumptions: (1) that the future is not laid out and (2) that decisions made and action taken today can affect the future 26 Visioning ''a tool to envisage the most desirable future, and commitment to create that future'' 24 Narratives ''narratives follow a particular structure that describes the cause-and-effect relationships between events that take place over a particular time period that impact particular characters''; 35 narratives may be highly imaginative and visual (e.g., ''science-fiction prototyping'') 36 Scenarios ''plausible, challenging, and relevant stories about how the future might unfold''; because scenarios are stories, they do not necessarily include numerical projections; 37 ''a coherent, internally consistent, and plausible description of a potential future trajectory of a system'' 38 Forecasting ''to calculate or predict (some future event or condition) usually as a result of rational study and analysis of available pertinent data''; forecasting is the estimation of the short-, medium-, or long-term future in a specific research area or according to the questions posed by means of scientific methods; 31 forecasting requires both broad and expert knowledge and is often model based 39 Projections numerical estimates of the likely or possible future values of one or more indicators of a system's behavior. For example, projections can be described numerically either as a plot or as growth rate 40 Horizon scan an expert-based elicitation approach to identify emerging issues, widely used for business and scientific purposes 41 counter arguments.…”