Thursday, July 31, 2003
Action research resource papers
Foresight is very often a matter of action research - here's a good resource on the topic.
Foresight is very often a matter of action research - here's a good resource on the topic.
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Monday, July 28, 2003
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
The Futurist's Bookshelf - ecletic blog, and growing selection of references
The Futurist's Bookshelf
The Futurist's Bookshelf
The European Monitoring Centre on Change (EMCC) sector futures studies have started to come online - the first is on IT, at:
emcc - european monitoring centre on change - Sector Futures
emcc - european monitoring centre on change - Sector Futures
EUROPOLIS an EC guide to S&T Foresight is at:
CORDIS: Science and Technology Foresight: Research in Foresight
CORDIS: Science and Technology Foresight: Research in Foresight
Monday, July 21, 2003
The purpose of this blog is to set out how recent developments in Foresight (mainly Technology Foresight at first, but more recently also Regional and other Foresight activities) move on from much traditional futures work, and to provide useful links to the more interesting activities in the Foresight domain.
INTRODUCTION
The Futures movement has long sought to offer more holistic views of possible futures than do traditional forecasting exercises. Forecasting usually examines a narrow set of trends, using rather mechanical methods like modelling or extrapolation. Futures work sees to connect together various driving forces, trends, and conditioning factors, so as to envisage alternative futures - rather than simply to predict the future. There have been many great futures studies - though quality control is almost nonexistent, and there has been a good deal of very poor work.
The term ‘Foresight’ became increasingly influential since the late 1980s, due to the popularity of governement-based technology Foresight programmes in Japan, Europe and elsewhere (esepcially taking off in the mid-90s). The journal FORESIGHT was not founded till the late ‘90s – by an ex-editor of the well-established journal FUTURES!. But how does Foresight differ from futures studies? In some quarters the terms are used interchangeably, but national Foresight programmes in the 1990s can be seen to have brought to the fore a particular approach to futures research.
I introduced the term “Fully-Fledged Foresight”, and use it here to describe this particular approach. It combines the three elements of long-term analysis and synthesis, participatory networking, and orientation to action. The term “Foresight” is being used to rebrand all sorts of activities - technology watch, environmental scanning, forecasting and similar activities as Foresight, for instance. These can be useful actvities in their own right, and inputs to FFF. But they are only parts of it.
FFF is oriented to three things: :
Futures: Development of strategic intelligence about future issues. (Questions of “accuracy”, relevance, quality, etc.)
Participation and Networks: Involvement of stakeholders and experts from a wide range of sources. (Questions of recruitment, engagement, networking, etc.)
Action: Feeding in to decision-making processes. (Questions of timeliness, appropriateness of presentation, policy impact, etc.)
Of course, the emphasis across these activities varies in specific circumstances. For example, the first UK Foreisght programme was highly active in all point, but the stres lay on action - informing research priorities. The second programme was focused more on networking. The thirs round, as I write now, has downplayed this latter role considerably, and adopted a much more narrow focus in terms of thematic areas.
SOME WEBLINKS - GENERAL
First, some of my own presentations are available from:
http://les1.man.ac.uk/cric/Ian_Miles/Pages/downloads_on_foresight.htm
must update this!
There's lots of good material out there, but here are some links for starters:
Special issue of Theorie und Praxis (in English, mostly) on Foresight:
http://www.itas.fzk.de/tatup/032/inhalt.htm
IPTS is a EU centre doing lots in the area - check out their futures Programme and various issues of the newsletter:
http://www.jrc.es/
A Practical Guide to Regional Foresight - this link is to the first edition: I dont know if the second, much improved one is online, but it has been published in 15 langauages by DG Research..
http://foren.jrc.es/Docs/eur20128en.pdf
EU material on science and technology Foresight
http://www.cordis.lu/rtd2002/foresight/home.html
FORESIGHT PROGRAMMES
Foresight Programmes worldwide
http://www.foresight.ics.trieste.it/Foresight_Worldwide/
Impressive Canadian material:
http://nrc.tomoye.com/ev.php?URL_ID=1468&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1058782707
FORESIGHT Training
Training on Technology Foresight
http://www.foresight.ics.trieste.it/icswbt/
INTRODUCTION
The Futures movement has long sought to offer more holistic views of possible futures than do traditional forecasting exercises. Forecasting usually examines a narrow set of trends, using rather mechanical methods like modelling or extrapolation. Futures work sees to connect together various driving forces, trends, and conditioning factors, so as to envisage alternative futures - rather than simply to predict the future. There have been many great futures studies - though quality control is almost nonexistent, and there has been a good deal of very poor work.
The term ‘Foresight’ became increasingly influential since the late 1980s, due to the popularity of governement-based technology Foresight programmes in Japan, Europe and elsewhere (esepcially taking off in the mid-90s). The journal FORESIGHT was not founded till the late ‘90s – by an ex-editor of the well-established journal FUTURES!. But how does Foresight differ from futures studies? In some quarters the terms are used interchangeably, but national Foresight programmes in the 1990s can be seen to have brought to the fore a particular approach to futures research.
I introduced the term “Fully-Fledged Foresight”, and use it here to describe this particular approach. It combines the three elements of long-term analysis and synthesis, participatory networking, and orientation to action. The term “Foresight” is being used to rebrand all sorts of activities - technology watch, environmental scanning, forecasting and similar activities as Foresight, for instance. These can be useful actvities in their own right, and inputs to FFF. But they are only parts of it.
FFF is oriented to three things: :
Futures: Development of strategic intelligence about future issues. (Questions of “accuracy”, relevance, quality, etc.)
Participation and Networks: Involvement of stakeholders and experts from a wide range of sources. (Questions of recruitment, engagement, networking, etc.)
Action: Feeding in to decision-making processes. (Questions of timeliness, appropriateness of presentation, policy impact, etc.)
Of course, the emphasis across these activities varies in specific circumstances. For example, the first UK Foreisght programme was highly active in all point, but the stres lay on action - informing research priorities. The second programme was focused more on networking. The thirs round, as I write now, has downplayed this latter role considerably, and adopted a much more narrow focus in terms of thematic areas.
SOME WEBLINKS - GENERAL
First, some of my own presentations are available from:
http://les1.man.ac.uk/cric/Ian_Miles/Pages/downloads_on_foresight.htm
must update this!
There's lots of good material out there, but here are some links for starters:
Special issue of Theorie und Praxis (in English, mostly) on Foresight:
http://www.itas.fzk.de/tatup/032/inhalt.htm
IPTS is a EU centre doing lots in the area - check out their futures Programme and various issues of the newsletter:
http://www.jrc.es/
A Practical Guide to Regional Foresight - this link is to the first edition: I dont know if the second, much improved one is online, but it has been published in 15 langauages by DG Research..
http://foren.jrc.es/Docs/eur20128en.pdf
EU material on science and technology Foresight
http://www.cordis.lu/rtd2002/foresight/home.html
FORESIGHT PROGRAMMES
Foresight Programmes worldwide
http://www.foresight.ics.trieste.it/Foresight_Worldwide/
Impressive Canadian material:
http://nrc.tomoye.com/ev.php?URL_ID=1468&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201&reload=1058782707
FORESIGHT Training
Training on Technology Foresight
http://www.foresight.ics.trieste.it/icswbt/
