This fourth thematic report of the Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) on the Whole-of-Government Approach (WGA), carried out under the Horizon Europe Policy Support Facility with Bulgaria, Finland, Malta, Romania and Slovakia, focuses on the green transition and the implementation of industrial technology roadmaps. It builds on the MLE visit to Helsinki on 25–26 September 2023 and is closely connected to ERA Action 12 on accelerating the green and digital transition of Europe's key industrial ecosystems.
Roadmaps are increasingly developed for major socio-technical system changes and technological transitions. They are goal-oriented strategic plans with a clear timeline that identify the major players and R&D needs, and, when produced at sectoral level, they are almost always collaborative. The report examines decarbonisation strategies and roadmaps at European, national and sectoral levels, with examples from Austria, Finland and Slovenia, the evidence base and forward looks that inform them, and the role of roadmapping in system change and industrial ecosystem orchestration, as in the Finnish roadmap to a circular economy.
Governments tend to develop new strategies and roadmaps more than they manage to implement them. The report points to several ways forward: engaging key actors, sometimes even members of parliament, to create commitment and a sufficient mandate; defining a granularity of the roadmap that suits the governance system at hand; establishing inter-ministerial coordination structures with shared responsibilities for implementation and follow-up; and balancing the participation of incumbent industries with emerging actors such as start-ups, research and technology organisations and civil society organisations. A common understanding of the current situation and of alternative industrial trajectories, based on data that all actors can trust, is a precondition for agreeing on targets. An annex offers guiding questions for countries applying the WGA to industrial technology roadmaps.
Reference
European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. (2024). Roadmapping for green transition through the whole-of-government approach: Mutual Learning Exercise on the Whole-of-Government Approach, fourth thematic report (T. Könnölä, Ed.). Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2777/425998

This report of the European Foresight Platform (EFP) reports on a regional foresight programme carried out in 2011–2013 in the Antofagasta region of Chile (Dufva et al., 2016). Organised by VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, the programme formed part of a broader joint project with the Chilean Mining Technological and Scientific Research Centre (CICITEM) that aimed at innovation-driven, sustainable economic development of the region. Its purposes were to improve foresight capability in the region, especially among the partner organisations, to enhance collaboration between industry, government and research organisations, and to support the creation of a strategic research agenda on a topic chosen by the partners. The time horizon was 2040.

The programme built on the Pact for Regional Development and Innovation signed by public and private actors in the Antofagasta region in March 2008, which sought economic growth and equality, better jobs and a path towards sustainable development. Chile looked to Finland as an example of how a resource-driven economy can become knowledge-driven when development strategies and policies are well chosen. Antofagasta is also an extreme risk area for ecological change: climate change and contamination from mining have had lasting effects on regional water supplies, and melting glaciers and the overuse of groundwater call for a significant redesign of water use.

The foresight activities had two parts. A three-day hands-on workshop in Antofagasta trained participants in futures thinking and in methods such as scenarios, roadmapping and Delphi, supported by a learning package with a glossary and a project website, and ended with group work on planning a foresight project for the region. On this basis, VTT and CICITEM selected the topic of a foresight pilot for its importance and relevance to different stakeholders. The pilot combined scenario and roadmapping work through a conference, two stakeholder workshops, a stakeholder survey, interviews with mining companies and a reflection discussion with CICITEM experts. VTT provided guidance and support, but the emphasis was on learning by doing for CICITEM researchers, who worked with researchers from local universities, representatives of local SMEs, government officials and mining companies.

Drawing on the process and the foresight literature, the authors developed a multi-layered framework for analysing the contributions of foresight (Dufva et al., 2015). At the landscape layer, foresight connects the region to the global context, helping participants to see Antofagasta as part of a larger system and to find its niche in global markets. At the innovation-system layer, it supports joint strategy formulation and a shared vision; stakeholder analysis helped to choose a suitably controversial topic that was interesting for all stakeholder groups and committed them to the process. At the organisational layer, the pilot generated new ideas about the role and mission of CICITEM, although not every researcher saw its benefit and some were reluctant to participate, which shows how a foresight process is entangled with organisational dynamics. At the individual layer, learning by doing gave participants experience in scoping, designing, implementing and documenting foresight; one CICITEM researcher reflected that he had learned to bring ideas 'high up in the sky down to earth'.

The report draws three implications for policy-making and practice. Foresight should be designed with multiple layers in mind, with particular attention to individuals, since changes in mindsets and worldviews through learning are what carry change into organisations and innovation systems. The nature of the effects varies between layers: knowledge produced weighs more at the landscape and innovation-system layers, whereas capabilities gained matter more at the organisational and individual layers. Finally, the layers can be used to structure the effects of foresight, showing that there is more to foresight than its immediate tangible outcomes and that a successful process can change the capacity of an organisation or a community to anticipate the future and, through that, contribute to regional transformation.

References

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 

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

The Euro-CASE Innovation Platform brings together European academies of engineering to examine the barriers in national innovation systems that prevent innovative SMEs in Europe from scaling up. Its analysis combined a generic review with sector 'deep dives', and the Royal Academy of Engineering of Spain (RAI) led the deep dive on industrialisation. The deep-dive workshop took place in Madrid on 30–31 January 2017, chaired by José Manuel Sanjurjo (RAI), and preparatory foresight was coordinated by Totti Könnölä and Francisco J. Jariego from Insight Foresight Instute.

Building on a background discussion paper and the results of the Euro-CASE survey, the workshop explored industrial innovation towards 2030 through industrial platform ecosystems: value networks that engage industrial providers and customers as well as research and technology organisations, universities, start-ups and other SMEs, investors, public agencies and regulators. Particular attention was paid to the future role of SMEs and the barriers they face in scaling up, and participants drew recommendations to inform European policy-making.

The findings fed into the platform report Barriers to Innovation and Scale-up of Innovative SMEs (Euro-CASE, 2017). Its industrialisation analysis stresses that keeping an advanced production base competitive remains a high priority; that jobs will shift from the physical towards cyber and convergence domains; that much of SMEs' existing software and hardware may become obsolete; and that policy should foster broad collaboration across incumbents and newcomers, sectors and public and private actors, much of it organised around digital platforms, with a focus on transformation rather than on correcting market failures alone.

References

Euro-CASE. (2017). Barriers to innovation and scale-up of innovative SMEs (Euro-CASE Innovation Platform report). https://www.euro-case.org/wp-content/uploads/Eurocase/Publications/PDF/Euro-CASE_Innovation-Platform-II-Report.pdf

Euro-CASE. (n.d.). Euro-CASE platforms: Innovation. https://www.euro-case.org/?p=35001

Insight Foresight Instit ute. (2017, March 31). SMEs, innovation and industrialisation for Europe 2030. https://if-institute.org/smes-innovation-and-industrialisation-for-europe-2030 

Between 2011 and 2013, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and the Chilean Mining Technological and Scientific Research Centre (CICITEM) carried out a regional foresight programme in Antofagasta, Chile's leading mining region, funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. The programme was part of a broader joint project to enhance innovation-driven, sustainable economic development in the region. It built on the 2008 Pact for Regional Development and Innovation in the Antofagasta Region and on Chile's interest in how Finland moved from a resource-driven to a knowledge-driven economy. The region also faces acute ecological pressures, not least on water supplies affected by climate change and mining.

The foresight activities pursued three aims: improving foresight capability in the region, especially among the partner organisations; strengthening collaboration between industry, government and research organisations; and supporting a strategic research agenda on a topic chosen by the partners. A three-day hands-on workshop in Antofagasta introduced futures thinking and methods such as scenarios, roadmapping and Delphi. A foresight pilot followed, combining scenario and roadmapping work through a conference, two stakeholder workshops, a stakeholder survey, interviews with mining companies and a final reflection session. VTT experts guided the process, but the emphasis was on learning by doing for CICITEM researchers, working alongside local universities, SMEs, government officials and mining companies, with a time horizon of 2040.

Reflecting on the process, the team developed a four-layer framework (landscape, innovation system, organisation and individual) for analysing how foresight contributes to new knowledge, capabilities and networks. The experience underlines that individuals are the key: changes in their mindsets and skills are what carry foresight into organisations and, ultimately, into regional transformation. The results are reported in EFP Brief No. 260 (Dufva, Könnölä & Koivisto, 2016) and in 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 

This policy brief synthesises the outcomes of all ten thematic foresight pilot workshops of the Eye of Europe project (2024–2026), which engaged more than 400 policymakers, researchers, entrepreneurs, citizens and foresight practitioners in Berlin, Bucharest, Madrid, Paris, Prague and Thessaloniki. Building on R&I Policy Brief No. 1, it draws a cross-cutting narrative from the full series. Asked how they perceived the future, participants most often described it as a roller coaster. The brief argues that the underlying problem is not speed as such but a loss of control over direction, and it calls for stepping off the roller coaster through collective transformation towards regenerative futures.

The brief identifies four focal areas for policy action: society, from individual wellness to collective wellbeing; fashion, from ultra-fast fashion to regenerative and immaterial value and identity; food, from efficiency and optimisation to regeneration and resilience; and governance, from reactive firefighting to anticipatory governance. For each area, it traces the shift from accelerated to regenerative paradigms, presents alternative strategies that emerged from the workshops, and sets out R&I policy implications at EU, Member State and regional levels.

Four cross-cutting implications follow for how Europe organises research and innovation: 

• rewarding systemic and interdisciplinary research; 
• treating citizen and stakeholder knowledge as a research input in its own right; 
• nurturing imagination and transformative ambition; 
• and recognising foresight as a European public good, a permanent capacity of ERA governance rather than a project-by-project activity. 

Investment should extend beyond technology to social, institutional and governance innovation, and be aligned vertically across EU, national and regional levels as well as horizontally across policy domains.

The Foresight Forum, established by the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry in mid-2004, served as the pilot that shaped the RPM Screening method. RPM Screening supported three expert groups working on nutrigenomics, health care and social services, and services for the provision of personal experiences such as tourism. Around 50 people were invited per theme, and parallel processes were run with postgraduate students in a course on decision analysis at Helsinki University of Technology.

In total, 166 innovation ideas were generated, commented on, revised and evaluated online, and the results were discussed in workshops. Several of the screened ideas were later taken up in the Delphi survey of a regional foresight project. The pilot showed how the solicitation of innovation ideas, rather than broad weak signals, can produce focused, comparable and action-oriented inputs while preserving diversity.

WoodWisdom-Net was one of the ERA-NETs supported by the European Union, to deepen collaboration between European funding organisations in wood material science, coordinate the use of research funds and promote the competitiveness and sustainability of the European forest cluster. Its 18 partners from eight countries (Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom) decided to launch a co-funded research programme in wood material science.

To shape the research agenda, a participatory bottom-up consultation was designed with the Systems Analysis Laboratory of Helsinki University of Technology. More than 400 researchers, industrialists and other stakeholders took part and proposed 317 research ideas, which were assessed online and prioritised with RPM Screening. Facilitated workshops discussed, validated and synthesised the results, and network analyses supported the identification of possible collaboration networks. The process ended with three groups of funders preparing joint calls for research proposals.

For more information: http://woodwisdom.tkk.fi/ 

Foresight activities have often supported priority-setting, networking and consensual vision-building. Drawing on complementary evolutionary perspectives, this article discusses these objectives from the viewpoint of diversity, which may be vital in contexts characterised by technological discontinuities and high uncertainties. Although the solicitation of weak signals has been widely advocated in such contexts, the solicitation of ideas for prospective innovations may result in more focused, action-oriented and comparable reflections of future developments.

Building on this argument, the article extends Robust Portfolio Modelling (RPM) into a collaborative foresight method called RPM Screening, with phases for the generation, revision, evaluation and analysis of innovation ideas. It reports experiences from a pilot project in which the method supported the work of the Foresight Forum of the Finnish Ministry of Trade and Industry.

The results of the pilot and other applications suggest that RPM Screening holds promise for fostering diversity in a variety of contexts, for instance in the development of shared research agendas and in the identification and assessment of technological risks.

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 

Although foresight has become increasingly relevant at the international level, little methodological attention has been given to the challenges that arise from the geographical dispersion of participants or from their national and regional idiosyncrasies. This article addresses these challenges in connection with coordination tools for the Open Method of Coordination, most notably ERA-NETs and European Technology Platforms, which the European Commission facilitates to contribute to the establishment of the European Research Area.

The successful management of these tools calls for multi-stakeholder processes, which place demands such as scalability, modularity and dependability on the design and deployment of foresight methodologies. The article reports experiences from a foresight process conducted in Finland to support the development of the Strategic Research Agenda of the Forest-Based Sector Technology Platform. The process was based on the RPM Screening methodology, which combined the Internet-based solicitation and assessment of research themes, the identification of promising themes through Robust Portfolio Modelling (RPM), and participatory workshops where the results of the multi-criteria analyses were discussed.

The encouraging results of the process and the broader potential of Internet-based decision support systems are discussed in view of European coordination tools.

Könnölä, T., Salo, A., & Brummer, V. (2011). Foresight for European coordination: Developing national priorities for the Forest-Based Sector Technology Platform. International Journal of Technology Management, 54(4). https://doi.org/10.1504/IJTM.2011.041583 

This article addresses the challenges of organising future-oriented consultation processes within European coordination tools for the Open Method of Coordination, such as ERA-NETs, which the European Commission promotes towards the establishment of the European Research Area. It reports experiences from a consultation process organised within WoodWisdom-Net (ERA-NET) to create an international research agenda, based on the long-term challenges of the European forest sector and on the identification of gaps and new opportunities in wood material science and engineering.

The process involved eighteen funding organisations from eight European countries and over 400 participants, most notably leading researchers and industrialists. It combined the Internet-based solicitation and assessment of research issues, Robust Portfolio Modelling (RPM) to identify promising research issues, and facilitated workshops where the results were discussed, validated and synthesised. Extensive network analyses supported the identification of possible collaboration networks and the development of joint calls for proposals.

Drawing on these experiences, the article discusses the broader potential of Internet-based decision support tools and participatory workshops in promoting foresight within ERA-NETs and other European coordination tools.

Brummer, V., Könnölä, T., & Salo, A. (2008). Foresight within ERA-NETs: Experiences from the preparation of an international research program. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 75(4), 483–495. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2008.02.005