Foresight has long been used to 'wire up' innovation systems, and exercises have been carried out at corporate, regional, national and international levels. Innovation ecosystems, however, extend across organisational, sectoral, regional, national and international layers, and both the development and the diffusion of innovations depend on framework conditions within and across these layers. The interconnectedness of the layers has so far received little attention in foresight literature and practice.

The article develops the concept of multi-layered foresight and proposes a framework for its design and management. The framework links the issues addressed (societal challenges and coordination), the inputs and incentives of stakeholders, and three facets of outcomes: knowledge, relations and capabilities. It is applied to the FP7 Personal Health Systems (PHS) Foresight project (2012–2014), which explored a field characterised by multiple disciplines, communities of practice, technologies and geographical contexts, and by fragmented development communities, market barriers and duplication of efforts. The project combined a literature review, interviews, social network analysis of European R&D projects, bibliometric and patent analyses and 39 case studies. A Web 2.0 platform with up to 900 registered members was used to submit, comment on and assess 42 visions of personal health systems in 2030. Two scenario workshops with 55 participants followed, the second of which developed a success scenario, and a strategic plan was prepared in dialogue with stakeholders.

The findings indicate that systemic interconnections within and across innovation systems should be reflected in the design and implementation of a foresight exercise as well as in its recommendations. The impact of foresight is likely to increase when activities in multiple layers are examined and engaged, and when strategies are designed in a concerted way. Online participation broadened the reach of the exercise, but it was mainly the interviews and workshops that built capabilities which stakeholders could apply in their own organisations.

Pombo-Juárez, L., Könnölä, T., Miles, I., Saritas, O., Schartinger, D., Amanatidou, E., & Giesecke, S. (2017). Wiring up multiple layers of innovation ecosystems: Contemplations from Personal Health Systems Foresight. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 115, 278–288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2016.04.018 

Foresight is increasingly used to support transnational research programming, although networks that apply it remain a minority among ERA-NETs (Haegeman et al., 2017). ERA.Net RUS (FP7-226164) was a Coordination Action under the International Cooperation activity of the FP7 Capacities Programme that aimed to link Russia to the European Research Area. It pooled the resources of funding agencies from 12 countries (seven EU Member States, four countries associated to FP7 and Russia), and its two pilot joint calls in 2011 funded 42 joint projects with a total budget of €10.3 million.

Between 2010 and 2014 a foresight exercise supported the development of sustainable science, technology and innovation (STI) cooperation between the EU Member States, the Associated Countries and Russia. It combined two strands. The structural strand addressed institutional solutions and funding instruments for cooperation: four scenarios of EU–Russia STI cooperation in 2020, ranging from 'R&D policy paradise' to 'Same problems, reORIENTation', were developed, validated in workshops and assessed for probability and desirability in a two-round Delphi survey of researchers and policy makers. The thematic strand started from a meta-analysis of foresight studies backed by expert interviews, and continued with roadmapping workshops in four fields: nanotechnologies, health, social sciences and humanities, and environment and climate change.

The results fed into a vision paper and action plan for cooperation up to 2020, which the Group of Funding Parties adopted and presented at the opening of the EU–Russia Year of Science 2014 in Moscow. The thematic priorities were used in the ERA.Net RUS Plus joint call of 2014 (€20 million, 63 funded projects). The transparent and participatory priority setting built trust among the funders, and it was one of the reasons why the Russian Ministry of Education and Science joined the call. The exercise was later used to develop and test an evaluation framework for foresight in transnational research programming (Haegeman et al., 2017), building on earlier work on embedding foresight in such programming (Könnölä & Haegeman, 2012).

ERA.Net RUS ran from February 2009 to January 2014 and was coordinated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Project information on CORDIS: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/226164

Do you have expertise in R&I foresight, R&I policy, or research and innovation practice?
You are invited to contribute to a short consultation: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐅𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐮𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 & 𝐈𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: 𝐄𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐀𝐬𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 2035.

The survey presents eight aspirational directions, covering topics such as public AI infrastructure, a European research commons, researchers’ skills and new forms of organising research. It asks you to assess the 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 and 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 of each direction. Optional comments explaining your reasoning or highlighting enabling conditions or concerns are particularly welcome.

🔗 𝐓𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐲
📅 Contribute by 1 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐦𝐛𝐞𝐫
⏱️ Around 15 minutes to complete

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘥𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘥𝘳𝘢𝘸 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘺 “𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘊𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘴: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘌𝘜 𝘗𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘺?”, 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘋𝘎 𝘙𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘐𝘯𝘯𝘰𝘷𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘪𝘴 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘻𝘰𝘯 𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘫𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘌𝘺𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘌𝘶𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦.

Policy Brief

Resilience must go beyond robustness, redundancy and emergency planning aimed at "bouncing back", and instead encompass systems' capacity to adapt and fundamentally transform ("bounce forward"), since companies, sectors and societies are complex adaptive socio‑technical systems. Because practical guidance for building adaptive and transformative resilience is still scarce, the authors draw on decades of innovation research and policy, which already studies how socio‑technical systems change and how their innovation capacity can be governed. They identify five transferable approaches, illustrated with cases such as the TechnologieRegion Karlsruhe 2030 strategy, the High‑Tech Strategy participation process, the BMVI mobility and fuels strategy, the Commission on the Future of Agriculture foresight exercise, and the mRNA/internet examples of long‑term basic research: developing local resources and regional innovation systems; strengthening diverse networks, participation and trust; providing "strategic intelligence" for governing transformations under uncertainty; fostering anticipation through foresight and futures literacy; and maintaining a broad, publicly funded base of curiosity‑driven research and competences. Conversely, resilience research can enrich innovation policy by challenging overly linear, plannable assumptions, pointing to approaches like anticipatory innovation governance and experimental spaces (real‑world labs) that embed self‑organisation into mission‑oriented policy — showing that innovation and resilience are mutually reinforcing goals requiring long‑term, strategic support.

[AI summary]

Join us for the presentation and hands-on exploration of the Museum of Futures, a tool designed to help people expand their thinking beyond the obvious, notice signals of change, explore uncertainties and imagine alternative futures.

​Agenda:

​Why we created the Museum of Futures: the idea behind it and the challenge it is designed to address.

​Museum tour & demonstration: how the tool works and how it can be used in practice.

​Hands-on testing: exploring the Museum and working with its artifacts.

​Learn to notice & analyse: What need might have emerged in this future? What driver could have led to it? What uncertainty sits behind it?

​Idea generation: together, we’ll explore other ways and contexts in which the Museum could be used.

Come join us for an exciting first ever international card game session of our project where we discover future sustainable transition pathways using a novel card game. The event is on 30.09 (Wednesday) in the library at 14.30. See you there!
How can we make sense of alternative futures at a time when sustainability transitions require changes across technologies, institutions and everyday practices? How can scenarios help us understand the dynamics of these changes and consider our capacity to shape them? This interactive workshop invites participants to explore these questions through a facilitated card game focused on the future of mobility systems.
Conducted by Johanna Vallistu, Joanna Raidal and Karmen Kütt-Ehala from Tallinn University of Technology, the workshop brings together two approaches: sustainability transitions thinking and foresight through scenario exploration. We combine them into a novel participatory method that connects alternative future worlds with the processes through which systems change. The card game provides a shared structure for exploring how emerging developments, established arrangements and wider societal pressures interact, and how these interactions can produce different mobility futures.
Mobility offers a concrete setting for this exploration. Moving towards sustainable mobility involves changes in infrastructure, public policy, business models, spatial planning, cultural expectations and everyday routines. Yet – multiple sustainability pathways are ahead of us at the moment. Participants will consider how different answers to these questions shape both transition processes and their possible outcomes.
The session is designed for participants interested in sustainability, mobility, governance, innovation or futures methods, with no prior experience of scenario work required. By the end, participants will have practised interpreting alternative futures, examining the systemic dynamics of transitions and discussing choices under uncertainty. The workshop also creates space to assess how a playful, structured format can support interdisciplinary dialogue and make complex questions about sustainability transitions more tangible, accessible and open to collective inquiry.

What will it mean to be a researcher in 2040, and who will decide?
This video explores how acceleration, concentration and contestation could shape the global science, technology and innovation landscape and put researchers’ careers under pressure.

It introduces Living Knowledge 2040 — a deliberately ambitious aspirational scenario for Europe that responds to these same forces through publicly governed AI, a trustworthy and plural knowledge ecology, and new forms of working, including human–AI swarms and Action-Networks. Underpinning it are wellbeing, collective work, public value, openness, meaning and full expression.

Created within the Eye of Europe project, the video is part of the series Foresight in Action – Stories on foresight practice across Europe.

The scenarios originate in The Futures of Researchers’ Careers: What Challenges for EU Policy?, a Foresight on Demand project funded by the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation (DG RTD).

What if you could visit the future before it happens?

The Museum of Futures is an experiential foresight tool developed by HorizonX to help people step beyond the assumptions of today and explore multiple possible futures.

Rather than predicting what the future will look like, the Museum invites visitors to explore imagined artefacts from different possible futures. Each exhibit offers a glimpse into a world that could emerge and encourages visitors to ask:

What had to change for this artefact to exist? What signals of this future can we already observe today? What new needs, behaviours and challenges could emerge? And what other futures might be possible?

The Museum consists of 10 thematic halls covering Work & Skills, Education, Economy & Finance, Climate, Technology, Security, Governance, Urban Futures, Health and Energy.

Why we created it

Foresight can be challenging for people who are unfamiliar with futures thinking. Participants often remain anchored in today's realities, existing assumptions and linear projections.

The Museum was created to make futures exploration more immersive, accessible and provocative.

Instead of beginning with frameworks and terminology, participants first encounter possible futures through artefacts, stories and questions. These experiences can then become a starting point for deeper conversations about signals, emerging change, trends, uncertainties and alternative scenarios.

How it can be used

The Museum can support different stages of a foresight process, including:

Futures literacy: introducing futures thinking in an accessible and experiential way.
Horizon scanning: connecting fictional artefacts with signals, emerging issues and trends visible today.
Challenging assumptions: helping participants move beyond dominant narratives and linear expectations.
Scenario exploration: expanding the range of possibilities considered before or during scenario development.
Strategic dialogue: exploring the implications of different futures for organisations, industries and society.
Creativity and engagement: creating a shared experience that stimulates curiosity and discussion among diverse stakeholders.

The Museum can be used independently or integrated into workshops, strategy processes, learning programmes and facilitated foresight sessions.

There is no single future. The Museum of Futures is an invitation to explore many of them and to reflect on the choices we make today.

Explore the Museum:
museum.horizonx.eu

Poster illustration of the first insights in strategic foresight within the LUKE project. 

Poster for the conference

New and emerging plant pests can undermine EU food security and farm/forestry incomes through yield losses, trade disruption and costly control measures, while also causing major environmental impacts through biodiversity loss, landscape change and increased pressure to use pesticides.  

Using a comprehensive foresight methodology, this study examines how global trade and tourism, climate change and agricultural systems contribute to the introduction and spread of new and emerging plant pests, assesses current and future pest risks, as well as scientific and technological options for their prevention, detection, and management, and reviews existing EU mechanisms.  

The study develops four scenarios up to 2050 to explore how key uncertainties may shape pest risks and system responses. Based on these insights, it identifies policy options to strengthen prevention, preparedness, and response capacities, supporting future EU policymaking.

This foresight study was conducted by Technopolis Group with experts from the Julius Kühn-Institute for the European Parliament's Panel for the Future of Science and Technology and commissioned by Scientific Foresight Unit (STOA) of the European Parliamentary Research Service. 

The report is published on the website of the European Parliament: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/thinktank/en/document/EPRS_STU(2026)788146.

What will it mean to be a researcher in 2040 — and who will decide?
As part of the foresight study The Futures of Researchers' Careers: What Challenges for EU Policy?, funded by DG RTD, set of scenarios was developed to explore how research work in Europe could evolve over the next fifteen years. This summary presents the scenario component of the study: the world research is likely to operate in, and an aspirational alternative to it.

The context: Knowledge in Society 2040
By 2040, at global level research runs on a powerful, ever-present AI layer — an "intelligence infrastructure" that learns from research, industry and society and shapes how knowledge is created, shared and used. It drives three linked shifts: research speeds up as AI opens access to almost all human knowledge and shortens the path from idea to market; power concentrates, as a few "Super Big Tech" actors control the key AI platforms and states compete for strategic advantage; and contestation grows, as trust erodes under a flood of AI-generated output and the gap widens between those AI strengthens and those it leaves behind.

Left on this trajectory, and with current policy lagging behind, research careers come under pressure: a workforce split into tiers with no bridge between them, the value of public research captured by the owners of AI platforms, AI deciding what becomes visible and fundable, and slow recognition of hands-on empirical work and the new roles emerging around AI.

The response: Living Knowledge 2040
Living Knowledge 2040 is the study's aspirational alternative. It assumes the same dynamics as the context scenario — acceleration, concentration and contestation — but channels them toward public value. It is built on four layers:

The core — a Glass Engine, advanced AI that Europe builds and runs as civic infrastructure: transparent, publicly governed, auditable and contestable; and a Commons Authority that keeps it and the wider knowledge ecology in the public interest.
A trustworthy, plural knowledge ecology — where empirical and synthetic knowledge are equally valued, credibility rests on traceability rather than the journal a work appears in, dissenting views are actively surfaced, and collective and once-invisible work is recognised.
New forms of operating — from human–AI swarms and public "Action-Networks" to quest-based research, automated public research infrastructures, and AI-powered entrepreneurship — with careers moving fluidly among them.
An explicit ethos — wellbeing, collective work, public value, openness, meaning and full expression as the values the system is built to serve.

***

How the scenarios were developed

The scenarios are exploratory tools, not predictions: they set out plausible, internally consistent futures against which today's policies can be tested. Three were developed by the Institutul de Prospectiva team and progressively validated and enriched through consultation with the project's International Advisory Board, with one dedicated meeting per scenario type between May and June 2026. Together they trace a path from the world research will operate in, through the gaps in current policy, to an aspirational alternative.

The context scenario ("Knowledge in Society 2040") is global in scope and focuses on how knowledge — and its embodied forms of technologies, policies and norms — is produced, circulated and translated into societal impact. It was built by extrapolating a set of key drivers of change and exploring how they interact and amplify one another, with particular attention to the major actors — scientific communities, states, private-sector actors and society at large — and to the evolving interplay between their strategic, economic and normative interests.

The inertial scenario provides the bridge. It sets out thirteen current challenges facing Europe's research and innovation workforce, grouped into four categories: a fragmented research market; funding and employment structures; the training and socialisation model; and assessment and recognition systems. Each challenge is examined along three dimensions — its current state ("the Now"); its likely 2040 trajectory, assuming balanced optimism about current EU and national policies; and a "context push" that tests that trajectory against the global picture from the context scenario. This surfaces two kinds of tension: those where existing policies fall short of the projected dynamics, and entirely new ones that current frameworks do not yet recognise as problems and that would require genuinely new policy categories.

The aspirational scenario ("Living Knowledge 2040") was built in three steps, starting from the key tensions projected for 2040. These were put through a simplified Causal Layered Analysis that reopened some of the system's underlying premises — who owns the AI infrastructure, how contribution is recognised, how value is capitalised — producing twelve dimensions, each described as a current perspective and a potential shift by 2040. Clustering these dimensions gave the scenario its four-layer structure: the AI infrastructure and its public governance; the principles of the knowledge ecology around it; that ecology's forms of operating; and the overarching values of the ecosystem. Deliberately ambitious but not utopian, it assumes the same forces as the context scenario — pervasive AI, platformisation, concentration and contestation — but channels them toward public value.

The Eye of Europe project has established Mutual Learning Events (MLEs) as a key instrument for strengthening foresight capacity, practice and institutional embedding in research and innovation (R&I) policymaking across Europe. Between 2024 and 2025, five MLEs brought together policymakers, representatives of national administrations and funding agencies, foresight practitioners, and experts from Member States and Associated Countries. Together, these events created a structured space for exchanging experiences, reflecting on good practices, and jointly addressing challenges related to the use of foresight in R&I policy.

The main conclusions and mutual learnings that emerged from the five MLEs are summarized in the Booklet on Mutual Learnings. The booklet is designed as a practical resource for different actors involved in R&I policymaking and strategic intelligence, each of whom can use it in a slightly different way depending on their role and needs. Readers are encouraged to focus on the principles, examples and recommendations most relevant to their context, and to adapt them to their own governance structures, policy priorities and levels of foresight maturity.

The brochure was prepared by the Technology Centre Prague, a member of the Eye of Europe project consortium.

The Eye of Europe project is launching a series of factsheets that capture the key themes, methodologies, and insights emerging from its pilot foresight workshops across Europe.

Bringing together citizens, researchers, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and other stakeholders, these workshops explore future challenges and opportunities for research and innovation using both established and novel foresight approaches. The aim is to mobilise collective anticipatory intelligence and stimulate reflection on the long-term evolution of research and innovation across the European Research Area.

Designed as accessible resources, the factsheets provide an interesting entry point to this work. They highlight workshop objectives, methods, key findings, and takeaways in a digestible format. Whether you are looking to explore a new topic or discover the insights behind a workshop report, these factsheets offer an engaging starting point.

The factsheets available cover:

• Futures of science and conflict (online, 27 March 2025)
• The future of sustainable fashion (Thassaloniki, January and April 2025)
• Geopolitical & industrial decarbonisation scenarios to identify R&I opportunities for the EU (Madrid, 10-11 April 2025)
• The future of Aging and Assisted Living Technologies (AALT) in 2035 (Berlin, 19–20 May 2025)
• Emotion ecosystems 2040 (Romania, 24–25 June 2025)
• The knowledge of our civilization in 2040 (Berlin, 20–21 November 2025)
• Territorializing a food transition towards healthy diets and food justice by 2040 (Paris, 18 April 2026)

See below under files!

Concept & facilitation: Iuliana Adina Apostol 

AIMEDIA 2026 - The Second International Conference on AI-based Media Innovation 

Nice, 5–9 July 2026 

part of IARIA - International Academy, Research, and Industry Association

Felt Futures is an experiential foresight project taking place at AIMEDIA 2026, the Second International Conference on AI-based Media Innovation, in Nice, France in July 2026. It begins from a proposition most foresight leaves untouched: a future is not only something a team analyses, but something they can be brought to feel — in the body, in the present tense — before the analysis begins.

Conventional foresight maps the terrain. It produces scenarios, trends and probabilities, and tells a group what is plausible. What it rarely settles is whether anyone in the room recognises themselves in the future being described. Teams routinely assemble an intellectualised future — mapped, weighted, argued — that no one actually inhabits, and then wonder why it fails to move them. The gap between an abstract projection and a future as it is felt from the inside is what Experiential Futures scholarship calls the experiential gulf. Felt Futures is an attempt to work directly in that gap.

Method. The project applies an adapted version of the Resonant Future Self Framework (RFSF), a facilitated protocol that guides a participant into a present-tense, sensory inhabitation of an ordinary working day in 2032 — not a forecast of it. Across five positions, the session moves from a temporal warm-up into the texture of the day itself, the relational field of who else is present, the threshold of what in the 2026 self is no longer recognised, and finally a single sentence sent from 2032 back to now. The wager is that a vividly simulated future runs on much the same emotional and physiological circuitry as a real one, so that a person — and, in application, a team — can try a future on at the level of sensation rather than argument.

Two capacities are easily collapsed into one. Affective foresight is the anticipatory projection of a future emotional state: a reading, made now, of how a coming situation is likely to feel. It works predictively, which is why it inherits the fragilities catalogued in the affective-forecasting literature — we overestimate intensity and duration, and we fixate on the triggering event while the rest of life fades from view. Emotional foresight, as I use it, works on the near side of the same process. Here the affect is generated in the present through simulation and registered in the body: a felt state produced now, and treated as evidence about the future it belongs to. Affective foresight estimates a future feeling; emotional foresight elicits one. RFSF operates entirely in the second register.

This is deliberately not affective forecasting, the well-documented and error-prone act of predicting how one will feel later. The relevant construct is affective episodic future thinking, or pre-experiencing: generating a genuine present affective response through simulation, rather than a cold estimate of a distant one. The distinction is what keeps the method out of reach of the classic "impact bias" critique — the claim here is about present elicitation, not predictive accuracy. It also has a current mechanistic basis: under predictive accounts of emotion, affect is constructed partly from the brain's reading of internal bodily signals, which is why the felt channel carries information an analytical read-out skips.

Lineage. Felt Futures does not claim to invent this terrain; it stands on it and says so. Its overall arc — interview participants about their felt futures, mediate the material into concrete artefacts, and show it back to a wider audience — independently reconstructs the Ethnographic Experiential Futures cycle described by Candy and Kornet, within the broader Experiential Futures tradition developed by Candy and Dunagan. What RFSF contributes is a tightened five-position protocol and, because the setting is a media-innovation conference, a specific role for AI-generated film and sound: here they are treated as part of the method, not merely its output — a way to reach senses and emotions that pure analysis passes over.

The pilot. Ahead of the conference, a first phase of individual sessions brings together five participants from different fields and countries: 

Prof. Dr. Stephan Böhm (RheinMain University of Applied Sciences),

Prof. Dr. Petra Ahrweiler (TISSS Lab, JGU Mainz), 

Prof. Dr. Matthias Harter (Hochschule RheinMain), 

Prof. Dr. Júlio Monteiro Teixeira (UFSC, Brazil), and 

Dr. Andy Banburski-Fahey (OCTO & MSR Deep Learning, Microsoft). 

They are deliberately not a leadership team. Comparing the felt futures of five people who share no company, no decision and no stake in the same outcome is the harder case; a team that already shares context stops looking like the difficult part.

On site, and what follows. The centrepiece takes place in person in Nice, where the group convenes — original participants plus new voices — to work through where their felt futures converge, diverge, or do not match at all. As a pilot (n = 5), its outputs are provisional interpretive instruments, not measurements: the affective maps drawn across participants encode ordering and resemblance, not coordinates, and any applied use is aggregate and anonymised by design. Findings from the Nice sessions will be reported in a second contribution.

Results to follow.

References
Barrett & Simmons (2015) — Nature Reviews Neuroscience 16(7), 419–429
https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3950

Candy (2010) — dissertation, The Futures of Everyday Life
https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.1.1840.0248

Candy & Dunagan (2017) — Futures 86, 136–153
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2016.05.006

Candy & Kornet (2019) — Journal of Futures Studies 23(3), 3–22 (open access)
https://jfsdigital.org/articles-and-essays/vol-23-no-3-march-2019/turning-foresight-inside-out-an-introduction-to-ethnographic-experiential-futures/

Moeck, Grewal, Mehta, Greenaway, Koval & Kalokerinos (2026) — Affective Science
https://doi.org/10.1007/s42761-026-00364-x

Schacter, Kalinowski & Wilson (2025) — Cerebral Cortex 35(1), 77–83
https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhae388

Schreiber, Schneider, Newen & Voigt (2024) — Emotion 24(6), 1481–1493
https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001345

Wilson & Gilbert (2005) — Current Directions in Psychological Science 14(3), 131–134
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0963-7214.2005.00355.x — free PDF: https://dtg.sites.fas.harvard.edu/WILSON%20&%20GILBERT%20(2005).pdf

Read what harm the current chase for profit and growth ("invisible environmental designer") causes to many areas of our lives (https://www.rifs-potsdam.de/en/output/publications/2026/when-business-shapes-minds-and-cities-how-profit-centric-economies), why it's important to change the definition of business and what that actually means (https://www.rifs-potsdam.de/en/output/publications/2026/rehumanizing-profit-paradigm-intervention-regenerative-futures ), what is the underlying psychological condition for this redefinition to become the status-quo rather than the exception (https://www.rifs-potsdam.de/en/output/publications/2026/trauma-made-climate-change-possible-psychological-preconditions) and what are some tools to achieve that (https://www.rifs-potsdam.de/en/output/publications/2026/designing-agency-tools-regenerative-business-practice)

We are living through a transition that feels, at once, like collapse and awakening. The crises surrounding us—ecological breakdown, technological acceleration, geopolitical fragmentation—are often treated as separate problems. But they are not. They are symptoms of a deeper rupture: a failure in how we perceive reality itself.

This is the beginning of the “Big Shift.” Not merely a historical turning point, but a transformation in consciousness. The dominant frameworks through which humanity has understood itself—nation, progress, even “humanity” as a unified moral subject—are no longer sufficient. They fragment under pressure because they were never grounded in the deeper fabric of existence. They abstracted us from the Earth, from each other, and ultimately from being itself.

Long before modern crises, ancient traditions understood something we have forgotten: the Earth is not an object. It is a living, sacred reality. Early liturgical texts and cosmologies did not separate matter from meaning. To speak of the Earth was already to speak of order, of balance, of participation in a larger whole. This was not “ecology” in the modern scientific sense—it was a lived metaphysics.

What has been lost is not knowledge in the narrow sense, but a way of knowing. The modern world, in its pursuit of control and clarity, reduced reality to what can be measured, extracted, and optimized. Technology is not the root problem; it is an extension of this perception. We did not simply build machines—we built a worldview that sees the world as machine.

And so we arrive at a strange paradox: we speak constantly of “saving humanity,” yet we do not even know what “humanity” means. It is an abstraction, a moral placeholder, often detached from real conditions and embedded inequalities. In trying to center humanity, we displaced the Earth. And in doing so, we undermined the very conditions that make human life possible.

A different orientation is needed. Not a rejection of humanity, but a re-centering within a larger field of existence. To love the Earth is not a poetic gesture—it is an ethical necessity. It means recognizing that harm to ecosystems is not external damage but a form of self-destruction. It means reframing ethics from human-centered to Earth-centered, from domination to participation.

This is where the future becomes most uncertain—and most significant. Artificial intelligence and emerging technologies are often framed in terms of capability and risk. But the deeper question is ontological: what kind of intelligence are we creating? If intelligence is participation, then ethical design requires more than safeguards—it requires alignment with the structures of reality itself.

We stand, then, at a threshold. The path forward is not a return to the past, nor a blind leap into technological futurism. It is a synthesis—a planetary civilization that draws from ancient wisdom while engaging modern knowledge. A civilization that recognizes the plurality of perspectives without losing sight of underlying unity.

This requires new forms of leadership, new frameworks of foresight, and a redefinition of progress. Not growth for its own sake, but alignment with the conditions that sustain life and meaning.

Ultimately, the future is not something we predict. It is something we participate in. Every action, every perception, contributes to the unfolding of reality. The question is not whether change is coming—it is whether we are capable of aligning with it.

To become planetary beings is not to transcend the Earth, but to belong to it fully. To act with awareness that we are not separate observers, but active participants in a living, dynamic cosmos.

The shift has already begun. The only question is whether we recognize it—and whether we are willing to follow it to its conclusion.

HorizonX is an integrated consulting ecosystem, combining expertise in strategy, foresight, innovation and leadership. We bring together decades of execution excellence and forward-looking intelligence, helping organizations prepare for the future and accelerate transformation in a sustainable way.

From our hubs in Vienna, London, and Bucharest, we leverage the combined expertise of a multidisciplinary network operating in over 20 countries. With a legacy of over 25 years through our founding partners, we deliver complex, large-scale transformations across the EMEA region.

This project, commissioned by the European Commission's DG-RTD and implemented by a consortium led by DLR-PT, develops strategic foresight to support R&I policy across ten EU candidate countries: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kosovo*, Montenegro, North Macedonia, the Republic of Moldova, Serbia, Türkiye, and Ukraine. 

It explores how research and innovation systems may evolve across these ten EU candidate countries in the Western Balkans and Black Sea region, with the aim of informing EU, national, and regional policy choices under conditions of uncertainty. 

The project combines desk research, a structured STEEPV-based trend framework, expert survey work, scenario development, and country-level policy dialogues to identify the drivers, uncertainties, and strategic choices shaping future R&I trajectories. Its first evidence base mapped 60 trends and drew on 338 expert responses across the ten countries, highlighting a shared pattern of weak implementation capacity, unstable funding, underused EU opportunities, and persistent talent loss.

Building on this, the project develops four cross-regional scenarios and expert co-creation, then translates them into ten country policy memos and a comparative regional analysis. The result is a foresight-driven set of tangible policy recommendations on how enlargement countries can strengthen R&I capacity, improve alignment with the European Research Area and Horizon Europe.

"Linking Ukraine to the European Research Area" (LUKE) is a multilateral project aimed at strengthening the Ukrainian research and innovation system. It brings together 26 funding and research organisations from Europe and Ukraine, which are jointly developing and implementing a transnational call for R&I projects with Ukrainian participation. The thematic priorities are developed on the basis of Delphi surveys, citizen visioning workshops and strategic foresight. At the same time, the "Knowledge Hub" is creating a platform for targeted competence building, for example in the divisions of research management, technology transfer, innovation policy and science communication.

In addition, LUKE contributes to the strategic design of EU-Ukraine cooperation in the field of research and innovation. The project will conclude with a high-level conference to discuss future scenarios for the Ukrainian R&I system in the European context.

The DLR Project Management Agency (DLR-PT) coordinated a study on digital citizen participation on behalf of the European Parliament's STOA Panel. Together with IQIB and DemocracyX, 94 digital participation tools were analysed and concrete recommendations for action were developed for the EU policy cycle.

The decline in political participation, coupled with the widespread perception among citizens that they are distant from the decision-making processes in Brussels, poses a significant challenge to EU institutions. Could digital tools and Artificial Intelligence help bridge the gap between citizens and European politics? This question was addressed in a study coordinated by the DLR Project Management Agency and co-authored by IQIB and DemocracyX. Completed in January 2026, the study was presented to the European Parliament's STOA Panel – the Panel for the Future of Science and Technology – on 12 March.

94 digital tools and 11 case studies compared
In order to obtain a comprehensive picture of the available participation landscape, the research team first analysed 94 digital participation tools from Europe and around the world using a three-phase approach, categorising them according to their functionalities. Building on this, eleven representative use cases were examined in detail, including the European Citizens' Initiative, the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFoE) with the Decidim platform, and local participation processes in Austria, Denmark, and Canada. In a third phase, European experts validated the preliminary results in a foresight workshop and discussed possible development scenarios for the use of AI in democratic participation processes.

AI in citizen participation: potential with clear limits
The use of AI in digital participation tools is still in its infancy. The study shows that, so far, AI has primarily been used as a background technology, for example for the automatic transcription of deliberation processes, clustering contributions, and machine translation. The potential for multilingual participation processes at the EU level is promising. At the same time, however, the study highlights significant risks. A lack of transparency due to 'black box effects', algorithmic bias, and inadequate data protection could undermine the democratic legitimacy of participation processes. AI should therefore always be used as an accountable, supportive tool, with clearly assigned human responsibility at the institutional level.
A key finding of the study is that the success of digital participation tools depends more on the political and institutional framework conditions than on the technology itself. For citizen participation to be democratically effective, a clear mandate, transparent procedures and visible feedback are required: citizens must be able to understand how their contributions have been incorporated into political decisions. Without this feedback mechanism, digital participation risks being perceived as purely symbolic, which would further erode trust in EU institutions. The study recommends that the EU view digital citizen participation as a strategic building block for strengthening the democratic foundation of the Union, rather than as a technocratic tool.

This technology foresight brief documents the process and findings of a horizon scanning exercise, part of a series under the FUTURINNOV.

The workshop, held online on 12 November 2025, focused on the identification, evaluation, and prioritisation of emerging technologies and breakthrough innovations across all technology readiness levels (TRLs) in the field of ocean observation. Signals were collected through expert inputs, literature review, and text and data mining of patents, scientific publications, and EU-funded research and innovation projects.

These signals were subsequently assessed by a multidisciplinary group of experts, leading to the prioritisation of eight key observation technologies: autonomous eDNA and eRNA samplers; lab-on-chip systems; cost-effective and modular sensors; data fusion between Earth observation and in-situ measurements; distributed acoustic sensing; AI-enhanced passive acoustic sensing; deep learning-enabled imaging; and flow cytometry and particle-based high-frequency observations of plankton.

In addition, four enabling technological and innovation fields were identified as critical for advancing ocean observation capabilities: expanding in-situ observation infrastructures; data interoperability and integration; autonomous surface and underwater vehicles; and artificial intelligence. The brief also highlights a range of contextual factors shaping the development and uptake of ocean observation technologies across social, technological, economic, environmental, and political and regulatory dimensions. These include challenges related to data standards and taxonomic expertise, tensions between budget constraints and increasing monitoring demands, the need for real-time detection in the face of accelerating environmental change, and geopolitical dynamics influencing international cooperation and the governance of dual-use technologies. 

We are a research-based advisory company providing applied research, evaluation and other consultancy services for the European Union institutions, international organisations and national governments.

Our vision is to be a standard of excellence and value in our sectors, a leading international company contributing to transforming the well-being of our society.

Our mission is to provide policy decision makers with knowledge for impact. We translate data and information into actionable, evidence-based knowledge for future-fit policies.

We are a values- and learning-driven company. Thus, we are committed to making a difference in the world, while at the same time creating a work culture that inspires and breeds constant learning and personal growth.

Democracy, its principles, as well as societal challenges and public debates are increasingly influenced by new and emerging technologies. To strengthen democratic principles, participation, public engagement, and citizens’ understanding of technology-related policies and strategies, it is necessary to deepen research into the interactions between technology and society. This also requires examining potential health, environmental, ethical, and other risks associated with new technological applications, as well as their impacts on different societal groups (for example, age groups, women and men, and social groups).

This face-to-face workshop with citizens will focus on assessing the impacts of new technologies on society and democracy as a whole. With a group of 30–50 participants, various long-term scenarios and their key drivers will be discussed and developed through group discussions. The workshop will use the Manoa foresight method, which explores long-term impacts and their interconnections by considering current weak signals, trends, and ongoing changes. The method incorporates cultural, environmental, and other assumptions, not only technological or economic factors. The outcomes may include surprising or even radical scenarios, encouraging participants to expand their imagination and test strategies under extreme conditions.

The workshop is open to the general public. Participation requires being at least 18 years old, having completed primary education, and ensuring gender balance among participants. Everyone who wishes to contribute to the topic is welcome, drawing on their own experience as citizens who use modern technologies daily and live in democratic societies that are increasingly challenged by geopolitical changes.

The workshop is part of a series of “Eye of Europe” pilot activities taking place during 2026, aimed at exploring possible futures and their implications for research and innovation (R&I) policy.

Date: 13/03/2026
Location: Ve Struhách 27, Prague 6, Czech Republic
Format: In-person
Language: Czech

For more information and registration, please contact: vacatkova@tc.cz

Preamble
Across Europe, the use of foresight for Research and Innovation (R&I) policy is growing, but unevenly. In many places, it still sits at the margins of policymaking, and its full potential—to inspire broader societal change—is not yet realised.

The European R&I foresight community, made up of practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and future-oriented thinkers, is
becoming stronger and more connected. The Eye of Europe project, supported by the European Commission, helps this
community grow through the online hub futures4europe.eu, as well as workshops, conferences and shared learning spaces.

This manifesto stems from a “foresight on foresight” workshop held in Mamaia, Romania (18–19 September 2025), coordinated by UEFISCDI and the Austrian Institute of Technology. 30 foresight practitioners and R&I policy experts from across Europe gathered to imagine how foresight could better support R&I policy and practice. Furthermore, these contents have also been discussed and enriched during Eye of Europe’s final mutual learning event held in Chișinău, Moldova (23–24 October 2025).

This manifesto recognises the growing importance of foresight—not only within European R&I systems but also at the interface between R&I and society—repositioning the field as a driver of inspiration and renewal in shaping Europe’s futures.

Foresight as a Key Social Infrastructure for Europe
Vision 2030 in a nutshell

Research and Innovation (R&I) foresight is a shared space of imagination and inquiry, enabling Europe to live creatively with emergence and diversity. Beyond agenda-setting, it cultivates futures literacy across science, policy, and society — expanding our capacity to sense, interpret, and engage with novelty.

Embracing the open and interdependent nature of the world, foresight complements evidence with creativity and plural ways of knowing. It guides Europe’s research and innovation ecosystems to act with openness, responsibility, and imagination — co-creating sustainable and just futures as a shared public good.

🔵 EXTENDED ROLE OF R&I FORESIGHT
In 2030 R&I foresight enables boundary spanning, connecting sectoral policies, disciplines, and perspectives. Its value lies not only in generating agendas or scenarios, but in reshaping worldviews, reframing challenges, cultivating agency, enabling collective reflection, and inspiring transformative action

🔵 OPEN AND INCLUSIVE SPACES
In 2030 foresight thrives on openness, diversity, and empathy. It creates spaces where people engage not only as experts or institutional actors, but as whole humans— bringing values, worldviews, emotions, and lived experiences into the co-creation of futures.
Trust grows from transparency, fairness, and shared ownership of both processes and outcomes. While AI expands access to knowledge, human judgment, engagement creativity, and responsibility remain essential.

🔵 FUTURES LITERACY AS A FOUNDATIONAL CAPACITY
Futures literacy becomes both a foundation and a legacy of R&I foresight. It strengthens the collective ability to recognise assumptions, navigate uncertainty, and act with intention amid complexity.
Foresight processes evolve into open spaces for learning and experimentation, cultivating anticipatory competence among experts, policymakers, and citizens. Through its practices and communication, R&I foresight contributes to a societal diffusion of futures thinking, enhancing collective intelligence and agency.

🔵 A MATURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
Foresight gains professional depth through dedicated academic programmes and practitioner networks. A wide variety of organisations embed foresight cultures that encourage reflection, experimentation, and communication. Shared infrastructures such as futures4europe.eu evolve into open, dynamic platforms for collaboration, knowledge exchange, and innovation in foresight.

Download the document at the top of the page to read the full version.

The Spanish Association of Foresight (AEProspectiva) was founded with a clear purpose: to give voice, structure, and recognition to a discipline that is essential for anticipating and designing futures. We aim to consolidate a shared framework of reference that connects professionals in the field, advances knowledge, and raises the standards of practice in Spain. We seek to be a living, collaborative network in which active listening and the participation of our members guide the Association’s initiatives and activities.

Future Impacts designs and implements foresight processes around questions on the
future of organisations and corporations. We carry out foresight projects to identify options
for future-oriented actions today. For this, we use or combine trend analysis, scenarios
and Delphi surveys, among other approaches. Aside from our focus on the development
and implementation of individualised foresight games, we also focus on foresight capacity
building. We support our clients to expand their foresight capabilities and skills through
training, toolkits and coaching.

Curious about how Europe’s demographic trends may transform the R&I landscape? 

On 10 December 2025, DG Research & Innovation hosted a hybrid event at the DG RTD Library in Brussels to present the Foresight-on-Demand (FOD) study: “The Demographic Turn: Actions Needed for Research, Innovation and Policy in Europe?”

FOD team members guided the audience through: 

• Background data showing a shrinking youth population, a declining workforce, and growing fiscal pressures on R&I funding. 
• A six-step Foresight Process combining horizon scanning, scenario-building, and windtunneling to anticipate future challenges. 
• Four Scenarios illustrating different pathways for Europe’s R&I system. 
• Strategic actions to protect fundamental research, foster lifelong learning, strengthen regional innovation, and build societal trust in technology.

👏 A big thank you to the panelists and speakers:

• Erik Canton (Deputy Head of Unit – Common R&I Strategy and Foresight Service, DG Research & Innovation)
• Nicola Francesco Dotti (Chief Economist Unit – Common R&I Strategy and Foresight Service, DG Research & Innovation)
• Brikena Xhomaqi (The Lifelong Learning Platform)
• Alex Petropoulos (Centre for Future Generations)
• Thomas Estermann (European University Association)
• Maciej Krysztofowicz (EU policy Lab, Joint Research Centres)
• Viola Peter (FOD team, Technopolis Group)
• Michal Nadziak (FOD team, 4CF)
• Katarzyna Figiel (FOD team, 4CF) 

And to all participants for an engaging exchange on how to build a more adaptive and resilient EU R&I system. 

In case you missed the event, you can find all the materials below.

The Foresight Centre is a think tank at the Estonian Parliament (Riigikogu) that analyses long-term developments in society and identifies emerging trends and potential development pathways. By exploring a range of possible futures, the Centre creates alternative scenarios to support evidence-based policymaking and strategic planning. Its research covers key areas that shape Estonia’s future, including education, healthcare, the economy, labour markets, social welfare, technology, and the environment. Through its analyses, the Foresight Centre helps decision-makers anticipate change and prepare for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

From methodology to results, the new “INNOVATION LANDSCAPE 2040” study by the Region of Central Macedonia proves that innovation is a deeply human phenomenon — not merely a technocratic process reserved for startups, executives of large corporations and researchers. Based on a participatory workshop involving people from the region’s ecosystem, the study highlights, beyond a favorable investment climate, human capital and a supportive culture as key ingredients for the future of innovation in Central Macedonia.

Innovation will save us. Or maybe not. Often presented as the “recipe” for economic growth and improved performance indicators — a kind of magic formula known only to a select few — innovation tends to be treated as an exclusive club, with unknown entry requirements.

In reality, things are quite different, though. The African proverb “it takes a village to raise a child” applies perfectly to innovation: a process inherently collaborative and adaptable to constantly changing external conditions. Even the emergence of a single new idea depends on mechanisms often invisible to the naked eye — systems and networks of people who interact, exchange ideas, and share experiences. At the same time, global phenomena such as (geo)political turmoil, climate change and its impact on tourism and agriculture, and Artificial Intelligence with the automation of many processes, are redefining our priorities and needs, shaping new challenges and opportunities for innovation.

This report presents the outcomes of the Geopolitical Industrial Decarbonisation Scenarios workshop, convened on behalf of the Eye of Europe Horizon Europe project by the Insight Foresight Institute. Bringing together 30 participants from across the European Union—including policymakers at EU, national, and regional levels, industry leaders, energy and climate specialists, and foresight and forecasting experts—the workshop explored how the EU can navigate mounting geopolitical uncertainty while accelerating industrial decarbonization on a 2050 horizon.

The discussion was structured around two core aims. First, participants examined a suite of forward-looking geopolitical scenarios, assessing how divergent power dynamics, energy trade patterns, and technological trajectories could either hinder or catalyse the transition to a net-zero industrial base in the EU countries. Particular attention was paid to supply-chain resilience, strategic autonomy in critical materials, and the interplay between carbon border adjustments and global climate diplomacy. Second, the workshop sought to surface emergent research and innovation (R&I) needs and opportunities that would equip EU actors to thrive across the scenarios. Priorities highlighted include advanced electrification processes for hard-to-abate sectors, low-carbon hydrogen and synthetic-fuel value chains, circular-economy business models, and data-driven tools for real-time decarbonisation monitoring.

Outputs from the session feed directly into the Eye of Europe project’s multi-workshop learning cycle. Immediate products comprise this extended report for attendees; aggregated insights captured in the public Pilot Logbook Part I – What we did and Part II – What we learned; and distilled policy recommendations to be released in the Eye of Europe Policy Brief: Foresight Perspectives on Key R&I Topics. Beyond documentation, the Insight Foresight Institute will leverage the findings to stimulate agenda-setting dialogues with EU bodies and industrial stakeholders, ensuring that identified R&I pathways inform Horizon Europe programming and other EU-level funding instruments. Workshop materials and presentations are retrievable via the futures4europe.eu knowledge-sharing portal, reinforcing the project’s commitment to an open foresight community.

futx.eu

Europe’s Research and Innovation (R&I) system is entering a period of profound change. Demographic decline, rapid technological shifts, and constrained funding are beginning to alter student intake, the graduate pipeline, and research career prospects. By 2050, Europe’s population structure will look markedly different:

• The share of people aged 85+ will more than double, reaching around 10% of the population.
• The workforce is expected to shrink by 12%—equivalent to roughly 25 million people.
• The EU will have over 3 million fewer young people under 20, reducing the talent pool entering education and research.

These shifts raise fundamental questions for the future of Europe’s R&I landscape. To address them, DG Research & Innovation commmissioned a study “The Demographic Turn: Actions Needed for Research, Innovation and Policy in Europe”, which explores possible futures for Europe's R&I system and highlights how demographic pressure could become a driver of renewal and transformation. 

The study delivers:

• Background data showing a shrinking youth population, a declining workforce, and growing fiscal pressures on R&I funding.
• A six-step foresight approach combining horizon scanning, scenario-building, and windtunneling to anticipate future challenges.
• Four Scenarios illustrating different pathways for Europe’s R&I system.
• Strategic actions to protect fundamental research, enable lifelong learning, strengthen regional innovation, and build societal trust in technology

A comprehensive version of the study is available for download at the bottom the page. It presents a detailed overview of the methodological framework (including desk research, stakeholder mapping, workshop design, and data collection and analysis) along with the corresponding data and survey findings. 

As innovation has a profound impact on many aspects of political, economic, social, and
geostrategic environment worldwide, the Region of Central Macedonia closely follows the
developments, trends and variables that favor and support it or negatively affect its development.
Stakeholders, private and public sector executives and citizens, explored through a
participatory and dynamic process (Thematic Participatory Workshop) the variables that will
affect the innovation and entrepreneurship environment of the region by 2040, identified their
dynamics and evaluated their interaction. The findings were the input of the working group
for the development of five scenarios that will determine the future of innovation in Central
Macedonia over the next fifteen years. Building upon scenario-driven insights, seven strategic
policy recommendations have been formulated to systematically strengthen regional resilience
mechanisms and prepare communities for diverse conditions across different alternative
futures (five scenarios): Development, Collapse, Transformation and Discipline.
The seven examined Megatrends that directly or indirectly affect the region and may affect
innovation developments are Climate Change & Environmental Degradation, Resource
Depletion, the Demographic Problem, Urbanization and Growth of the Middle Class,
Technological Explosion, Hyperconnectivity and Cybersecurity, the Dawn of the Global
South and Polarization. Digital transformation, changes in the employment model, digital
nomads, the rise of populist parties and woke agendas, trust in institutions, urban farming, a
shift in urban agriculture, pressure on social welfare systems and the health sector, geopolitical
turmoil, brain drain, crowdfunding, tightening of the legislative framework for the protection of
intellectual rights and personal data, strict environmental regulations and greenwashing will
be some of the effects of these forces.

In a narrow context, scanning the future identified four Drivers of Change that have a significant
impact on the area of innovation and require the attention of policymakers: (a) Political Unrest
and Confused Democracy, (b) Employment 4.0: Transition to new work conditions, (c) The
Era of Convergence: Digital Superiority and Skills, and finally (d) Social Values as a Lever
for Legislative Change."
However, the innovative environment in the future can be identified through a wide range of
scenarios. The need to develop a set of distinct scenarios led to the study of uncertainties
that affect the environment in an unpredictable way, interact with each other drastically and
play a key role in understanding the conditions that will be created in the future of innovation
in the region, and in choosing five uncertainties that their developments over time define the
futures we chose, as most likely to shape the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in
the region of Central Macedonia. The five Uncertainties highlighted by the working group are:
[1] Political and Geopolitical Uncertainty: Buckle up, turbulence expected
[2] Business Uncertainty: Anticipated Outcomes and Corporate Transformations
[3] Regulatory Frameworks for Innovation: Ethics Considerations, Strategic Directions
and Development
[4] Navigating the Era of Disconnection: Addressing Workplace Loneliness and Social
Uncertainty [5] The Impact of Climate Change on Tourism.

This study was realized for the Region of Central Macedonia, GR and was co-funded from the European Union (ΕΣΠΑ 2021-2027)

The World Futures Studies Federation offers its standards to institutions interested in achieving accreditation in futures studies. Institutions offering programmes which meet the Federation’s standards will be credentialed as an Accredited Foresight Programme. Accreditation will extend for a period of five (5) years. Review of accreditation will be available every five (5) years to ensure programmes continue to maintain high quality standards of the Federation.


We provide accreditation only to education providers that have been recognized by the relevant department or ministry of education in their country as a tertiary education provider.

How To Apply: https://wfsf.org/accreditation-services/ 

The Eye of Europe project conducted a pilot workshop focused on Aging and Assisted Living Technologies (AALT) to examine their potential impact on European society and research and innovation (R&I) policy, particularly in the context of demographic changes such as aging populations and increased chronic health issues. The workshop aimed to anticipate the societal and policy implications of integrating smart and digital technologies into assisted living and care for older adults. Using the futures wheel method, participants explored future developments across three main areas: institutional long-term care, home-based care, and the inclusion of individuals with special needs in the workplace. The workshop was structured around three future assumptions for the year 2035, envisioning that AALT will become standard practice in long-term care facilities, widely used in private households, and successfully integrated in workplaces to support employees with special needs. Through this anticipatory approach, the workshop identified overarching effects of AALT on society and highlighted the importance of these technologies in shaping future policy and innovation strategies. This workshop was part of a broader series of foresight pilots designed to engage diverse stakeholders, test foresight methodologies, and contribute lessons to the Eye of Europe community and its online foresight platform. The attached report summarizes the results of the workshop and discusses the findings in the context of Europe R&I policy.

𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗥&𝗜 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽 unfolded on September 18-19th on Romania’s seaside coast — two breezy summer days that provided the perfect setting for a rich exploration of “foresight about foresight.”

Co-hosted by Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding - UEFISCDI and AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, and part of the 𝗘𝘆𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 (a Coordination and Support Action funded by the European Commission), the event brought together the community of practice working to 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 & 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 (𝗥&𝗜) 𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲.

Our shared ambition was to imagine a vision that is grounded in reality and lived experience, yet bold enough to inspire the next decade of foresight’s contribution to R&I.

Discussions flowed through several stages:
🌍 reflecting on today’s foresight landscape, particularly within R&I in Europe
🔎 identifying likely drivers of change for R&I in society by 2040
🧭 probing the forces that could reshape foresight itself by 2040 and finally,
🚀 envisioning the role and capabilities foresight will need to support R&I in 2040.

A vision document capturing the outcomes of the workshop will be shared in due course, once the many insights, contributions, and reflections have been carefully woven together. 

What was the challenge?

The Research Council of Norway (RCN) identified five strategic areas in pursuit of ground-breaking research, radical innovation and sustainable development. RCN required a robust evidence base to help develop long-term, priority missions to help solve one or more societal challenges, as well as underpinning structural measures of the research environment in Norway. The five strategic areas include: Oceans; Green transition; Health and welfare; Cohesion and globalisation; and Technology and digitalisation.

How did we approach it?

We adopted a mixed method, participatory approach involving a variety of research tools such as trend analyses, literature reviews, stakeholder interviews, focus groups, crowdsourcing ideas from experts, a survey of the public, future scenario analyses and workshops.

The core foresight work allowed us to examine what might happen in the next ten years in the different strategic areas and wider R&I system in Norway. Scenarios of future states were used as the basis for workshop discussions to stress test potential missions and structural measures that the RCN could consider developing and implementing in the future.

What was the outcome or impact of the work?

Extensive findings from this research were published in a series of nine reports. The research was cited as evidence in the RCN’s input to the 2022 revision of the Long-Term Plan for Research and Higher Education 2019–2028, which specifies the Norwegian government’s ambitions, key objectives and priority areas for research and higher education.

The study also helped inform the RCN’s internal decision making, strategies and organisational activities. In addition, a summary of the findings and proposals was presented to the relevant Norwegian minister.

Project webpage: https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/2021/future-research-innovation-norway.html 

Research outputs:

• Summary report: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-1.pdf 
• Addressing future societal challenges in Norway: Detailed methodology report: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-2.pdf
• A summary of potential cross-cutting missions to address future societal challenges in Norway: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-3.pdf
  
  Structural measures to develop a resilient research and innovation environment in Norway: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-4.pdf
  
  Health and welfare: An analysis of trends, future directions and potential missions to address societal challenges in Norway: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-5.pdf
  
  Oceans: An analysis of trends, future directions and potential missions to address societal challenges in Norway: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-6.pdf
  
  Technology and digitalisation: An analysis of trends, future directions and potential missions to address societal challenges in Norway: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-7.pdf
  
  Cohesion and globalisation: An analysis of trends, future directions and potential missions to address societal challenges in Norway: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-8.pdf
  
  Green transition: An analysis of trends, future directions and potential missions to address societal challenges in Norway: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA900/RRA966-1/RAND_RRA966-9.pdf