Emerging Practices in Foresight and Their Use in STI Policy

Emerging Practices in Foresight and Their Use in STI Policy Cornelia Daheim* & Sven Hirsch** Abstract Foresight, a major methodological tool in the STI policy toolbox, has recently featured new directions in methodological development, becoming influenced by progress in information and communication tech- nologies and online tools. However, no overview of these directions has been available so far. Based on a literature review, an interactive workshop, and an international expert survey as well as expert interviews, the research presented here attempts to shed light onto some of the relevant issues by providing a structured overview of recent changes in order to further the debate on the future directions of methodological development in foresight. The paper outlines four clusters of emerging approaches in foresight:Integrated qualitative and quantitative approaches, IT-based and automated foresight, experiential foresight including new forms of communication and interaction such as visualization and gaming, and open and crowd-sourced approaches. The benefits and challenges of the approaches known so far are categorized and summarized, and areas of potential use for each of the clusters in STI contexts are identified. Keywords Foresight, new methods, STI policy processes, future perspectives The authors would like to thank all experts who have contributed via informal consultations, the survey and the interviews, especially Dr. Kerstin Cuhls and Dr. Martin Rhisiart for co-facilitating the workshop at the EU-FTA conference, and most importantly STEPI and its reviewers for supporting this research under their fellowship program and for their invaluable feedback. * Founder and Principal, Future Impacts Consulting, Cologne, Germany, [email protected] ** Foresight expert at Future Impacts Consulting and Lecturer for modeling of complex systems, ZHAW Zürich (Zürich University of Applied Sciences), Zürich, Switzerland [email protected]. 24 1. INTRODUCTION CHASING THE NEW IS DANGEROUS TO SOCIETY EVERYTHING THAT'S INTERESTING IS NEW (Jenny Holzer, Truisms, 1984) 1.1. Background Foresight, a methodological pillar of long-term oriented science, technology and innovation policy, is showing new directions of methodological developments. Foresight is defined as “a systematic, participatory process, collecting future intelligence and building medium-to-long-term visions, aimed at influencing present-day decisions and mobilising joint action (Havas, Schartinger, & We- ber, 2010). Recent changes in the methods employed in foresight stem from several drivers including: • changes in demand in its use in science, technology and innovation (STI) policy (for example a demand for wider participation) and also in other decision-making arenas, such as corporate foresight or foresight for other public bodies; • technological innovations that enables new approaches (for example improvements in information technology that enables progress in text mining and clustering for scanning in foresight); • research and practical insights into weaknesses in the traditional approaches and attempts to thus further develop approaches (e.g. the push to more clearly demonstrate impacts and create deeper forms of engagement). Different aspects of the recent methodological developments have been discussed using a variety of labels and terms, such as “Foresight 2.0,” “Open Foresight,” “5th generation foresight,” “networked foresight,” and “experiential foresight” (Daheim & Uerz, 2008; Desaunay, 2014; Hines & Gold, 2013; Porter, 2010; Prime Minister’s Office Finland, 2014; Ramos, 2012; Saritas, Burmaoglu, & Tabak, 2014; Schatzmann, Schäfer, & Eichelbaum, 2013; van der Duin, Heger, & Schlesinger, 2014). They relate, for example, to these approaches: IT-tools that support foresight; using the “intelligence of the crowd” for generating long-term-oriented research insights (crowd-sourced scenarios); the (re)integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches in foresight (qualitative- quantitative scenarios); “gamification,” visualization and design fiction or “experiential foresight” as new ways to produce insights and communicate results, for stronger engagement with a wider group of process participants and decision-making or policy implementation. Thus, although the reflection on these changes has been the subject of a lively and more and more prominent discussion in the foresight and STI community in the last years, there are few attempts at more formal overviews and reflections of the impacts of these developments so far, apart from the discussions in several expert and working groups of the relevant networks and associations or in conferences, and some analyses on only one aspect of these developments. So far, no overview of these individual aspects of the overall methodological development has been produced and backed 25 STI Policy Review_Vol. 6, No. 2 up by the input of a significant number of experts. As many of the “new” approaches have not yet been published in a formal way, and as the attempts at overview and reflection on impacts have so far focused on only one aspect (e.g., the online-based approaches or the integration of qualitative and quantitative), it remains difficult to judge the overall picture (Ciarli, Coad, & Rafols, 2013) and conduct a productive discussion about future directions without this common ground of a shared perspective of the current situation. This study thus aims to shed light onto some of the relevant issues by trying to provide a structured overview of these changes, backed by the view of experts on current developments, and thereby further the debate on future directions of methodological development in foresight. We chose STI policy as the specific field of use, as it is widespread and of key importance in the use of foresight. Especially against the backdrop of a more complex, volatile and rapidly as well as consistently changing policy environment, foresight grows in importance in STI Policy as it can serve as “a crucial part of an early warning system” (Havas et al., 2010). This is especially critical as on the one hand, new approaches are called upon to deliver better results and impacts in policymaking contexts, and “a strong need is emerging for a more realistic assessment of the strengths and the weaknesses of various types of prospective analyses” (Havas et al., 2010). This is specifically true for the use of foresight in an STI policy context (compared to regional or corporate foresight), as it is one of the fastest growing fields of foresight use and thus makes up a major share of the foresight application cases, and as it is specifically used when “a more funda- mental rethinking of policies is needed” (Havas et al., 2010; see also Popper, Keenan, Miles, & But- ter, & Sainz, 2007 and Saritas et al., 2014). Thus, it is important to be aware of new methodological directions and of their strengths and weaknesses. Still, the question remains as to what happens once we have an indicative overview of the current developments: how can we make sense of which of those approaches to use in what situation? Therefore, we also provide first indications for the potential use of the emerging approaches in an STI policymaking context, and such first indications are included as part of the discussion of future perspectives of the emerging approaches. However, it has to be noted that all outcomes, due to the problematic publishing situation of newer approaches, remain at the status of indicative first insights. To verify where exactly developments are going, a more thorough research will be needed and may only be possible after a considerable time lag of having these approaches entering traditional documentation within peer-reviewed jour- nals and formal project reports. But the precise aim of the reflection here is to shed some light onto recent developments while they are happening, in order to enable a more informed reflection in the community and among policymakers in terms of what we see changing now and what this might imply for future directions of foresight practice. 1.2. Structure of the Paper In chapters 2.1 and 2.2, the paper outlines the major approaches and sources of insight used, which are informal expert consultations in the preparatory stage, a workshop with experts from the field at the European conference on forward-looking technology analyses, and an international expert 26 survey and expert interviews as well as literature research. Chapter 2.3 gives further details on the emerging clusters of “new” approaches in foresight that were identified from the research,via a descriptive overview of project examples and the existing insights on strength and weaknesses. Chapter 3 reflects on potential future developments with respect to further use in specific phases of foresight processes, specifically its use in STI policy. Chapter 4 summarizes the main conclusions and indicates directions for further research. 2. SURVEY AND EXPERT INTERVIEWS - APPROACH AND MAJOR OUTCOMES 2.1. Methodology For answering the question of which directions of methodological development are currently be- ing seen in the field, an international expert survey was used as the core of the research, supported by literature research and additional expert consultation. The inputs used for generating the survey (e.g. the list of approaches that was used in the survey and discussed in the expert interviews) were generated in four steps1 : 1. Literature analyses on “new” approaches 2. An informal collection of expert input via the

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