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Foresight Methods and Practice: Lessons Learned from International Foresight Exercises
Four key messages from a talk at the MICA Foresight Methodology Workshop
La Palma Research Centre hosted the Foresight Methodology Workshop of the Horizon 2020 project Mineral Intelligence Capacity Analysis (MICA) in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria on 10–11 May 2017. The project was concerned with intelligence on mineral raw materials, and the workshop looked at how foresight methods could serve that purpose. My contribution drew on a set of international foresight exercises carried out over the previous decade, ranging from regional foresight in a Chilean mining region to European horizon scanning and global roadmapping in manufacturing (Könnölä, 2017). This post revisits the presentation and its four key messages: foresight serves the whole policy cycle, foresight designs are always customised, foresight tools are never the first step, and the value of foresight depends on engaging the 'client'. The slides are attached.
1. Foresight for the whole policy cycle
Foresight is often associated with the early stages of policy-making, when agendas are set and long-term visions are articulated. Its contribution, however, extends across the whole policy cycle. In agenda setting, foresight offers visions, a better understanding of change and greater legitimacy and transparency in the choice of priorities. In policy definition, it generates policy options and new ideas and builds ownership among those who will implement them. Ex-ante impact assessment benefits from the exploration of impacts under alternative futures, while implementation can draw on new policy configurations and a more responsive system. Evaluation, in turn, gains from prospective considerations, closing a learning loop that feeds the next round of agenda setting (Könnölä, 2017).
Underlying this is a view of the future as open. The 'futures cone' distinguishes between possible, plausible, probable and preferable futures, with business as usual forming only a narrow strand within a much wider space of potential developments (Voros, 2003). Foresight exercises differ in which part of the cone they address. Some concentrate on probable developments to support planning, others explore the plausible and the possible to test strategies against surprise, and many seek to articulate preferable futures that stakeholders are willing to work towards.
The regional foresight programme in Antofagasta, Chile, illustrated these contributions in a setting close to the interests of the raw materials community. Between 2011 and 2013, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland cooperated with the Chilean Mining Technological and Scientific Research Centre (CICITEM) to improve the human capacities of CICITEM as a facilitator of regional innovation, especially in knowledge and technology management. The cooperation pursued capacity building in institutional leadership, knowledge management, innovation culture and innovation capabilities; self-sustained innovation capacity at CICITEM; and the capability to create a strategic vision for regional innovation and to facilitate joint innovation activities in the mining cluster (Dufva et al., 2016). Water, under pressure from climate change and mining, became the focus of the foresight pilot.
The contributions of the exercise can be read at four levels (Dufva et al., 2015). At the landscape level, participants gained a better understanding of global developments and networks and of Antofagasta's position in the global system, together with skills to scan and project these developments and engagement with international stakeholders. At the innovation-system level, the exercise identified key barriers and drivers in the regional system and its water-related sub-systems, actions to overcome the barriers and a vision of a desired future, and it brought stakeholders from different sectors together for the first time. At the organisational level, it produced a roadmap for research related to water and mining, strengthened the foresight culture and capability of CICITEM and improved its contacts and status. At the individual level, participants improved their understanding of the regional context and of futures thinking and learnt to conduct foresight through training and hands-on engagement in the design and management of the exercise. VTT's own innovation programme on the mineral economy pointed in a similar direction, combining competences such as hydrometallurgy, powder metallurgy and life cycle assessment with business models and foresight, and working towards a circular mineral economy based on valuable element recovery, residue utilisation, substitution of critical raw materials, remanufacturing, reuse and recycling (Könnölä, 2017).
2. Foresight designs are always customised
There is no single foresight method and no standard design. In the mapping of regional foresight exercises presented in the talk, literature review, scenarios, expert panels, futures workshops, brainstorming and SWOT analysis were the most frequently used methods, followed by questionnaires and surveys, trend extrapolation, interviews, environmental scanning, Delphi and megatrend analysis, while backcasting, stakeholder mapping, key technologies, structural analysis and technology roadmapping were used less often (Könnölä, 2017). Methods can be positioned along several dimensions: quantitative and qualitative, face-to-face and online, intuitive and rational, subjective and objective, creative and evidence-based. Good designs tend to combine methods across these dimensions rather than settle at one end of each.
Much of the value lies in integration. A typical integrated process begins with the search for signals and moves on to creating, curating and evaluating drivers. The drivers are clustered and structured into scenarios, from which success scenarios are defined. Roadmaps then reorganise the drivers, create solutions and evaluate them against the scenarios before the most promising ones are selected, after which the process turns to analysing future markets, identifying partners and defining actions (Könnölä, 2017). Three cases from the talk show how such combinations are tailored to purpose.
The first, 'Facing the Future', was a horizon scanning exercise carried out in 2009 by the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC-IPTS) for the Bureau of European Policy Advisers (BEPA) (Boden et al., 2010). Horizon scanning was organised around four interlinked activities: scoping, scanning, synthesising and coordinating. BEPA and JRC-IPTS selected six areas of analysis in February; forward-looking reports were reviewed and synthesised to identify issues in March; an online survey of 270 experts assessed the issues in April; multi-criteria analyses of the survey results followed in May; an expert workshop with 19 experts and 22 policy-makers combined the issues in June; and the final report was compiled by November. The multi-criteria analysis used RPM Screening (Könnölä et al., 2007) to compare issues under alternative preference structures. A mean-oriented analysis ranked relevance above novelty and probability, a rare-event-oriented analysis gave priority to inverse probability, and a variance-oriented analysis highlighted issues on which expert views diverged. Issues that scored well independently of the criteria preferences could thus be distinguished from those whose position depended on how the criteria were weighted, which made the prioritisation transparent and traceable (Könnölä et al., 2012).
The second case was a Web 2.0 foresight platform set up by JRC-IPTS for the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) (Haegeman et al., 2012). After preparation and a pilot, the platform opened a first phase for collecting ideas and a second phase for assessing them. Once the platform closed, a first report on the ideas was presented to the EIT Governing Board, and a background document prepared the ground for a workshop with selected experts and Board members, which led to the final report. The online and face-to-face stages were designed to complement each other, so that broad participation could be combined with focused deliberation among decision-makers.
The third case, the IMS2020 project on intelligent manufacturing systems, showed the particular challenges of global foresight (Cagnin & Könnölä, 2014). The process combined mapping, two online surveys, workshops on key area topics (KAT) and interviews. Drivers were grouped under policy and governance (e.g. aligned and coordinated policy and regulation, global multi-level collaboration, collective values and behaviours), industrial and international R&D cooperation (e.g. breakthrough technologies, cooperation across value chains, new markets, standardisation and knowledge management) and knowledge and society (e.g. education, competences and skills, energy, natural resources and environmental footprint). Scenario design options ranged from two-axis matrices to morphological combinations of factors. The IMS2020 scenarios were built on a policy and governance axis and an international industrial R&D axis, nested with knowledge society and environmental sustainability dimensions, and four snapshots were positioned within this space. The resulting vision called for rapid and adaptive user-centred manufacturing leading to customised and 'eternal' life-cycle solutions, for highly flexible and self-organising value chains, and for sustainable manufacturing made possible by cultural change among individuals and corporations and by a regulatory framework co-designed by governments, industries and societies. The final roadmap linked research and technological development topics, research actions and their expected impacts, and KAT visions and objectives to the IMS2020 vision over horizons of one to three, three to seven, seven to ten and ten to fifteen years.
3. Foresight tools are never the first step
A wide range of tools is available to support foresight, many of them digital. Technology maps visualise technology and patent landscapes at different levels of detail, helping clients to define strategic objectives, explore their position and follow innovation dynamics; at the Insight Foresight Institute these were developed in partnership with Tecmine. Online foresight platforms, developed with Orchidea, support structured engagement of stakeholders and experts through the submission, commenting and assessment of emerging issues, innovation ideas and challenges, with filtering and graphical presentation of results. RPM Screening, based on Robust Portfolio Modelling, allows interactive multi-criteria analysis of issues according to relevance, novelty, feasibility or other criteria (Könnölä et al., 2007, 2012). Online surveys run on commercial platforms make consultation user-friendly and efficient to manage, with flexible export of results (Könnölä, 2017).
None of these tools should be the starting point. They are always tailored to the needs of the client, and their value depends on the quality of the scoping, the questions asked and the people engaged. A technology map without a clear strategic question, or an online platform without a community willing to contribute, tends to produce data rather than insight. The choice of tools follows from the purpose of the exercise and from the policy or strategy process it is meant to inform.
4. Engaging the 'client'
The conclusions drew these experiences together. Complexity and uncertainty call for foresight and resilience. Different future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) systems are complementary, and their diversification strengthens the capacity to anticipate. Methods are best combined in a modular and responsive way, so that the design can adapt as the process unfolds. Close interaction with sponsors and clients is needed throughout, from scoping to the use of results, because foresight creates value only when its insights are taken up in decisions (Könnölä, 2017). For the raw materials community, these lessons suggest building foresight into the policy cycle, combining scanning, scenarios and roadmaps in designs tailored to the questions at hand, and engaging policy-makers, industry and researchers from the outset.
Access to the presentation: https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/foresight-methods-and-practice-lessons-learned-from-international-foresight-exercises/76021158?utm_source=clipboard_share_button&utm_campaign=slideshare_make_sharing_viral_v2&utm_variation=control&utm_medium=share
References
Boden, J. M., Cagnin, C., Carabias, V., Haegeman, K., & Könnölä, T. (2010). Facing the future: Time for the EU to meet global challenges (EUR 24364 EN). Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2791/4223
Cagnin, C., & Könnölä, T. (2014). Global foresight: Lessons from a scenario and roadmapping exercise on manufacturing systems. Futures, 59, 27–38. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2014.01.007
Dufva, M., Könnölä, T., & Koivisto, R. (2015). Multi-layered foresight: Lessons from regional foresight in Chile. Futures, 73, 100–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2015.08.010
Dufva, M., Könnölä, T., & Koivisto, R. (2016). Building regional foresight capability in Antofagasta, Chile (EFP Brief No. 260). European Foresight Platform. https://if-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Building_Regional_Foresight_in_Antofagasta_Chile_EFP-Brief-No.260.pdf
Haegeman, K., Cagnin, C., Könnölä, T., & Collins, D. (2012). Web 2.0 foresight for innovation policy: A case of strategic agenda setting in European innovation. Innovation: Management, Policy & Practice, 14(3), 446–466. https://doi.org/10.5172/impp.2012.14.3.446
Könnölä, T. (2017, May 10–11). Foresight methods and practice: Lessons learned from international foresight exercises [Presentation slides]. Foresight Methodology Workshop, Mineral Intelligence Capacity Analysis project, Las Palmas, Spain. https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/foresight-methods-and-practice-lessons-learned-from-international-foresight-exercises/76021158
Könnölä, T., Brummer, V., & Salo, A. (2007). Diversity in foresight: Insights from the fostering of innovation ideas. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 74(5), 608–626. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2006.11.003
Könnölä, T., Salo, A., Cagnin, C., Carabias, V., & Vilkkumaa, E. (2012). Facing the future: Scanning, synthesizing and sense-making in horizon scanning. Science and Public Policy, 39(2), 222–231. https://doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scs021
Voros, J. (2003). A generic foresight process framework. Foresight, 5(3), 10–21. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680310698379
Posted on: 29/10/2026
