Part 2Foresight studies

Practice and Methods that support them

Why is the Practice to have a framework for designing foresight studies?

• Contextual Issues – providing advice regarding the organisation, running

and implementation of Foresight Programmes

• Countries using (or wishing to use) foresight methodologies are:– culturally different– at different socio-economic stages of development

• Assumption that there is always more than one ‘good way’ to do things

Elements of Forming a Foresight programme

• Coalition building• Sponsorship• Objectives• Scope of the

programme• Research elements and

methods

• Reflexivity• Resources• Level of the programme• Type of intervention• Outcomes

Essential timing steps

• The discussion of the elements of a Foresight Programme should be conducted in the context of three points in time:– Its initiation– Execution– Implementation of its results

Notional process

The methods scene• Orientation

– Normative– Exploratory

• Nature– Qualitative– Semi-quantitative– Quantitative

• Essence– Evidence-based– Expertise-based– Creativity-based– Interaction-based

Methods in context• Foresight methods:

– expert assumptions– subjective judgements– tacit knowledge

are borrowed and adapted from elsewhere

Methods you think you know...

Methods you thinkyou don’t know…

Methods you don’t know you don’t know…

But remember:

• Wittgenstein who said in 1953 that:– “methods pass the problem by”

Methods may be:

• Qualitative– Relying on opinion

• Quantitative– Numerical and statistical data – Analyses and processing of databases, indicators

• Semi-Quantitative– Mathematical or statistical principles to process

subjective knowledge – Examples:

• weighting ideas, judgements• NUSAP

– Number; Units: Spread; Assessment; Pedigree

The foresight triangle

The Foresight Triangle, as it is also known, became very popular among Foresight practitioners because of the user-friendliness and simplicity of the framework.

Especially because it helps people to understand that certain proportion of creativity, expertise and interaction need to be combined in the process.

But …

There’s more to it …. The diamond

Interaction

Creativity

Evidence-based activities, such as technology assessment, technology watch, benchmarking, patent analysis and bibliometrics, should form the forth pole

Evidence helps creativity and challenges expertise..

The Diamond makes it easier to classify widely used methods such as literature review and scanning, for example.

The Foresight Diamond

Evidence

Expertise

Scanning

Literature review

The whole picture

Modelling

Extrapolation

Indicators

Benchmarking

Quantitative (6)

Cross-impact

Bibliometrics

Creativity

InteractionExpertise

Evidence

Science fiction

Scanning

Brainstorming

Essays / Scenario writing

Conferences / Seminars

Wild cards

SWOT analysis

Expert Panels

Genius forecasting

Scenario workshop

Morphological analysis

Interviews

Literature review

Citizen Panels

Relevance trees / Logic charts

Backcasting

Role Play/Acting

R. Popper (2006)

Roadmapping

Quantitative Scenarios/SMIC

Delphi

System/Structural analysis

Voting / Polling

Gaming-simulation

Stakeholders Mapping

Key/Critical technologies Multi-criteria

Patent analysis

Qualitative (17)

Semi-quantitative (10)

Exploratory & Normative• Exploratory

– Based on what we know Today– Exploring Possible Futures– Examples:

• Conventional Delphi• Conventional Scenario Workshops• Cross-impact analysis• Trend extrapolation

• Normative– Based on what we want/desire for the Future– Planning how to get there from Today– Examples:

• Goals Delphi• Success Scenario workshops• Relevance trees, morphological analysis and

roadmapping

• A creative and interactive face-to-face and online group working session to generate:– new ideas

– around a specific area of interest

– to remove inhibitions and allow people to think more freely

• It is key component of foresight: it’s extremely flexible :

• The steps are: – Sharing and exchanging views by the group of people

– Gathering the ideas as they arise without being criticised or further elaborated

– all ideas are discussed and clustered into categories

Brainstorming