Imagine a network of schools trying to prepare for the future of digital technology. Almost every institution knows it needs to change, yet most digital initiatives stall. Why? Because organizations usually fall into a trap called Information Systems Operation Transformation (ISOT). They adopt new digital tools simply to automate existing tasks and boost efficiency, while leaving their underlying mindsets, teaching models, and cultures completely unchanged. 

True Digital Transformation, by contrast, requires a fundamental socio-technical shift in an institution’s core value proposition, culture, and strategy. But in education, no single school board or university can do this alone; they operate in complex, non-hierarchical networks. In these networks, transformation is repeatedly blocked by strategic persistence, an inertia rooted in past success, and by budget-holding managers who favor short-term operational fixes over long-term future exploration. So, how do we bridge this gap between future thinking and real-world action? My research explores a two-part steering engine.

First, we use participatory strategic foresight and scenario planning as a structured learning routine. Rather than trying to predict a single future, scenario building provides a 'safe transitional space' where leaders can combine System 1 intuitive gut feelings with System 2 analytical forecasting. This process surfaces symbolic anchors, shared metaphors and language that make complex digital futures visible and legible across fragmented school systems.

Second, foresight alone doesn't automatically create change. It requires active network management and process facilitation. Because networks lack hierarchical authority, facilitators must deploy specific management strategies, such as connecting key stakeholders and exploring shared content, while engaging unconventional thinkers, or 'remarkable people,' to navigate political budget constraints and power dynamics.

By connecting participatory foresight with deliberate process orchestration, this approach generates cognitive, relational, and structural social capital across autonomous institutions. It enables collective sensemaking, allowing divergent school systems to align around a shared vision for public value.

Over the course of my 5-year, we are co-designing, prototyping, testing, and evaluating a practical Scenario-Based Network Orchestration Framework. This framework will equip network facilitators and educational leaders with a repeatable toolkit to manage power dynamics, dismantle strategic persistence, and turn future-oriented thinking into collective, transformative action.

Eye of Europe Foresight Starter Video #2

This video is introduces viewers to the top ten tips for getting value from their participation in a foresight workshop. Although foresight workshops are conducted with different goals and methods, some universal principles of participation before, during, and after the workshop can accelerate your entry into the process.

The video presents 10 tips for participating in a foresight workshop, and it is very useful viewing for anyone about to participate in such an event for the first time. The tips are simple and practical, from "Familiarize yourself with the process", over "Think Big" to "Connect Ideas to Action".

The video also makes use of Sohail Inayatullah's futures triangle - you can read a blog post about it here: https://medium.com/@chrisjriedy/the-future...  

Often, in workshop settings, it is useful to begin with a light exercise that stimulates participants’ interactive participation, encourages them to think outside of their ordinary lines of thinking, and which therefore helps prep them for the events to follow.
This is perhaps especially true for participatory foresight workshops with participants not trained in or familiar with foresight are tasked with imagining futures and supplying information and creative solutions beyond their ordinary and traditional expertise. This is not easy, and participants often feel a little uncomfortable about this, at least at first. Asking a simple question that the participant is able to relate to, while simultaneously taking them outside their traditional modes of thinking, is often an effective way of starting to build the trust and comfortability that a good outcome of the workshop requires. 

For this reason, as part of Eye of Europe we have built a set of tried and tested Foresight Starter Prompts that organizers can use in workshop settings. These prompts provide questions that organizers can used to initiate workshop conversation and get the workshop off to a good start. 

By making this standard set of Foresight Starter Prompts available, we want to lower the barrier for organizing workshops and lower the barrier for inviting new groups of people into the workshops.

The prompt really is a simple question aimed at stimulating thinking, discussion, and participation. Not all questions are explicitly related to the future or to foresight and futures thinking, but as you can see in the material, they all have their use for stimulating this.

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.

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.

Facing uncertainty around climate change, AI, and job security, youth in Vietnam took part in two foresight workshops where they explored future trends, used strategic tools, and built skills to respond to challenges and shape long-term solutions. 

Why Futures Thinking Skills Matter for the Youth in Vietnam

Young people across Vietnam and Southeast Asia are navigating a future shaped by climate change, environmental degradation, and the rapid rise of automation and AI. Many are concerned about job security and feel uncertain about what lies ahead. There’s also a growing sense of mistrust toward institutions and doubts about whether a sustainable and just future is truly being safeguarded. In the face of these realities, learning how to think strategically about the future - and take action - is becoming an essential skillset for youth.

Exploring the Future Through Youth Collaboration & Foresight

With the support of the European Commission, the EU Delegation in Vietnam organised two online foresight workshops for the Vietnam Youth Advisory Board (VYAB). The sessions were held in September 2024 and each session lasted 1.5 hours, tailored to the participants’ availability across time zones.

The workshops brought together young people from VYAB and participants from neighboring countries to explore how futures thinking could help youth shape Southeast Asia’s future, especially around three EU priorities: the digital and circular economy, responsible entrepreneurship, and governance.

Using the Youth4Foresight toolkit, participants engaged in interactive sessions via Miro, an online collaboration tool that was well received. The energy was high, especially as youth connected across the region and from different professional backgrounds to share ideas and build new perspectives. 

Tools to Shift Mindsets and Spark Ideas

To kick off, participants explored three warm-up exercises: imagining the world in 2050, rating uncertainties about the future, and identifying trends likely to shape the region. These activities encouraged reflection and helped shift thinking from the present to long-term possibilities. The future holds many paths, but once we begin to recognize them and take action, we can shape those possibilities into something better. 

From Trends to Actions

The workshops introduced two main foresight tools: the Futures Wheel and 3 Horizons.

With the Futures Wheel, participants mapped the ripple effects of trends like digital transition, shifting global power dynamics, and resource scarcity. This helped them understand how one change could lead to another, revealing both risks and opportunities for regional action.

The 3 Horizons exercise invited participants to reflect on current realities, imagine more desirable futures, and propose ways to get there. Working in teams based on EU priorities, they turned broad visions into concrete ideas and short-term actions. 

Shared Futures, Shared Responsibility: A Key Takeaway

Futures thinking proved to be a powerful tool in times of uncertainty. It allowed participants to think more strategically, adaptively, and collaboratively. As they described: "It gave structure to our ideas. We felt more in control of shaping what’s next."

One of the strongest takeaways was the value of working together. By sharing ideas across the region and professional backgrounds, participants saw how collective thinking leads to more creative, inclusive, and actionable outcomes. It’s not just about imagining what’s coming - it’s about imagining it together.

Youth left the workshops with stronger skills, renewed motivation, and a clearer sense of how they can lead change in their communities and beyond.

Check out the toolkit and start building your future-thinking muscles! 

Lesotho faces some of the highest inequality levels in the world, leaving young people vulnerable to poverty, unemployment, and forced migration. Nearly a third of the population is under 24, yet youth voices can stay absent from decision-making. Cultural norms discourage open deliberation between young people and adults, leaving many — especially young herders, returnees from South Africa, and young women and girls — without opportunities to shape their futures.

The European Union, UNICEF, and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) launched the Youth Power Hub Programme in September 2024, with the goal of empowering young people as key players in governance and development at both local and national levels. To make the activities also future facing, the Youth4Foresight toolkit was used at the launch event. 

Training foresight facilitators

The toolkit, produced by European Commission, foresight experts and young people worldwide, offers a set of foresight techniques tailored for young people. Rather than relying on external foresight experts for a one-off workshop at the launch event, the EU and partners focused on embedding foresight within the Youth Power Hub itself. Local youth leaders participated in hybrid training on foresight fundamentals, specific tools, and facilitation skills.

These facilitators then led a futures workshop for 100 participants, exploring ‘The Future of Youth Advocacy in Lesotho.’ A key tool used, part of the Youth4Foresight toolkit, was Three Horizons , a structured approach to understanding systems change and transitions. 

Shifting mindsets, creating space for new ideas

For many participants, this was the first time they had been invited to systematically and critically think about the future — not as something distant and abstract, but as something they could actively shape. One facilitator described the experience as “a permission slip to imagine beyond the immediate struggles we are navigating.” Others found clarity in seeing how interconnected issues like climate resilience, youth unemployment, and political participation required systemic solutions. By framing discussions in terms of possible futures rather than fixed positions, it created space for conversations that might otherwise have been constrained by political or institutional barriers.

The workshop also empowered the young participants collectively convey their views on the Lesotho of the future to the decision makers present at the launch event, as a practical example of the dialogue that the Power Hub seeks to encourage.

What’s next for foresight in the Youth Power Hub?

Foresight is not a one-off intervention; it is a capability that grows over time. In a world where youth engagement is often reduced to consultation rather than real agency, the Youth4Foresight Toolkit offers young people a way to navigate uncertainty and define alternative futures they can build towards.

Spanning from 2024 to 2029, the Youth Power Hub in Lesotho will actively involve young people in decision-making to strengthen citizen participation and build stronger, more inclusive communities. The project supports the Youth Action Plan in European Union external action for 2022-2027 , the first ever policy framework for a strategic partnership with young people around the world. 

In 2025, the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) completed the project Synthetic Drugs 2050 to address increasing uncertainty surrounding the future production, distribution, and use of synthetic drugs in Europe up to 2050. Using horizon scanning, trend analysis, and sense-making approaches, the Foresight on Demand (FOD) project team and EUDA jointly developed four plausible scenarios to support EU-level and national stakeholders in anticipating emerging risks, identifying opportunities, and reinforcing the resilience of future policies.

The 2026 FOD–EUDA project marks the second phase of this foresight work and will focus on:

• Transforming the 2050 scenarios into interactive tools that foster strategic thinking
• Developing participatory formats that make complex foresight insights accessible and engaging
• Formulating recommendations for embedding foresight practices into EUDA’s strategic planning and policy development

The project will deliver:

• A Scenario Activation Toolkit with interactive resources
• Participatory testing and validation workshops with key stakeholders
• A final project report, including a toolkit manual and consolidated insights on the project’s outcomes
  

The future of the European science system fundamentally depends on its researchers, and it is therefore essential to continue fostering attractive and sustainable research careers. Yet, a wide range of challenges is currently shaping both researchers’ professional trajectories and the broader EU research and innovation ecosystem.

Against this backdrop, DG Research & Innovation commissioned the Foresight On Demand team to conduct a study with the following objectives:

• Identify long term trends and disruptions affecting researchers’ careers in Europe.
• Develop plausible scenarios (to 2040) for the evolution of the EU’s researcher workforce.
• Propose policy pathways and identify challenges. The study will outline potential EU level policy approaches and governance reforms that could generate added value through coordinated action.

By informing policymaking, the study’s findings will aim to support greater coordination among Member States and strengthen the effectiveness of governance structures, funding mechanisms, and frameworks for research career development across Europe.

Walk the Futures is a guided walking experience exploring what life in a local area might feel like in the year 2055, through stories, reflection, and the places that people already know.

We combine multi-sensory, place-based stories of possible futures with walking as a method and an embodied way of knowing, and a creative workshop to prompt reflection and commitments to climate and sustainable action.

Project details:
https://walkthefutures.org/ 

The Future of Sustainable Fashion event took place on Monday, April 14, 2025, at the MOMus - Museum of Modern Art in Thessaloniki, Greece. The workshop was implemented surrounded by the relative with the subject exhibition Collective Threads: Anna Andreeva at the Red Rose Silk Factory. This initiative was implemented by Helenos Consulting, a partner of the Eye of Europe Project, and aimed at engaging domain professionals, including foresight and fashion experts.

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/ 

EIT Food Consumer Observatory is organising online workshops focusing on the consumer acceptance of functional and processed food and alternative proteins by 2035. The online workshops are organised on September 11 and 18, from 10 to 13 hours CET. This is an open invitation to participate. It is free, just write us to consider your participation and learn more about the process: info@if-institute.org

What to expect in the workshops:
Before the workshops: Read this brief background document to familiarise yourself with the approach and prepare for the workshops.
During the workshops: Discuss and participate by writing your comments via MS Teams chat and the Miro board sticky notes. Note that the workshops will be recorded to enable automated transcription in Teams.
After the workshops: The expert team will develop scenario narratives, which are presented and discussed further in another workshop on November 4th 10-13 CET, which allows the reflection of scenario implications for the current agrifood ecosystem. Finally, a policy brief will be published end of the year.

Last year, we did a similar process focusing on the future of new food products and experiences and One Health. More information here:
https://if-institute.org/futures-of-food-consumption-in-2035-in-europe-on-sustainability-health-and-technology 

What if we could test-drive our future selves?

Most scenario workshops stay in the head. The Resonant Future Self Framework flips that script by letting participants embody possible futures through immersive narrative experiences - while their brains and bodies react in real time. Peaks of coherence in EEG and heart-rate variability become “north-star signals” that guide purpose discovery. The method weaves together generative AI, emotional storytelling, and biometric sensing to open a new path toward deeply felt, personal foresight.

First public presentation – Vienna, May 2025
The framework was introduced at the Futures4Europe Conference 2025 – Exploring Future-Oriented Collective Intelligence (Vienna, 15–16 May), organised by the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology as part of the Eye of Europe flagship initiative. The presentation focused on the conceptual foundations of the method, shared results from the first single-participant pilot study, and outlined how emotional resonance - measured through real-time physiological signals - can enrich scenario work with an embodied, intuitive layer of decision-making.

Next stop – AIMEDIA, Venice, July 2025
From 6–10 July, the project will be featured in the AI in Immersive Media track at the First International Conference on AI-based Media Innovation (AIMEDIA 2025) in Venice.

The presentation will cover the generative narrative pipeline that produces the six personalised future-self videos, share expanded pilot-study findings (including EEG and HRV analysis), and preview ongoing efforts to partially automate the scripting, visual generation, and video assembly process using tailored AI workflows.

While human editing and quality control remain essential, these steps point toward a future in which the method becomes faster, more scalable, and easier to adapt across educational, coaching, and wellbeing contexts.

Read more
To explore more about the method, goals, and future plans, visit the dedicated project page (link below).

An experimental methodology that lets people feel alternative life-paths instead of merely thinking about them by combining AI-generated personal future narratives, immersive audio-visual simulation and real-time bio-feedback to spot “inner resonance”.

The Resonant Future Self Framework is an experimental methodology that merges strategic foresight, immersive narrative design, biometric sensing and applied neuroscience to help people feel their way into personally meaningful futures. Participants co-create six AI-generated “future-self” stories based on a deep self-inquiry, then step inside those stories. While they watch - and sometimes star in - the simulation, EEG, heart-rate variability, respiration, skin conductance and peripheral temperature are recorded in real time to detect moments of coherence or dissonance between the body and the imagined life path. These physiological “resonance markers” complement post-session journaling to reveal which futures evoke a profound sense of rightness and which trigger resistance or cognitive overload .

The practice unfolds in nine interconnected steps: 

1. Discover personal strengths, conflicts and aspirations; 

2. Reflect by generating diverse narrative futures with generative-AI support; 

3. Select the two scenarios that feel most alive; 

4. Embody them in immersive media while gathering biometric data; 

5. Review the combined subjective/objective signals; 

6. Activate the preferred future through weekly micro-practices in daily life; 

7. Backcast concrete milestones linking present and desired identity; 

8. Revisit the experience after six-to-eight weeks; 

9. Second Test under identical biometric conditions to measure shifts in alignment .

An April 2025 single-participant pilot demonstrated that personalised immersive future-self simulations can indeed generate rich, differentiated biometric signatures - and that those signatures align closely with felt meaning. During two iterations of an AI-generated, audio-visual journey into imagined future identities, EEG, heart-rate, respiration, skin conductance and peripheral temperature were recorded continuously. The aggregated signal showed alternating phases of elevated gamma activity and transient heart-rate acceleration (markers of emotional arousal) followed by stretches of sustained alpha rhythms and increased heart-rate variability (often linked to calm, integrative attention). Immediately after each immersion, the participant completed reflective journaling; the qualitative entries mapped almost point-for-point onto the physiological timeline, suggesting that this form of embodied resonance mapping can translate subjective alignment into measurable data.

The session also surfaced practical insights - such as the need to calibrate narrative intensity to avoid cognitive overload and to provide structured debrief protocols - that now inform the forthcoming group trials. Although limited to a single case, these early findings validate the technical pipeline and bolster the central hypothesis that combining AI-personalised storytelling with real-time biofeedback offers a powerful pathway to purpose discovery.

Building on that proof-of-concept, the research progresses through three phases: 

(1) Individual immersive foresight to refine protocols; 

(2) Group-based resonance testing to explore social amplification and shared insight; and 

(3) Scalability studies that port the method to mobile-friendly, light-weight XR so schools, universities and coaching programmes can adopt it at low cost.

We empower you to work with the futures. Our ideas show organizations how to deal with terms like weak signals, trends or white spots, and at the same time energizing to position themselves. We like discussing new developments and trends, with their respective effects on the organization, in order to design frameworks for actions and strenghten the matching future-attitude and accompanying measures.Schaltzeit has successfully provided consulting and operational services within the areas of foresight, ideation, experiences, software and design, to organizations in sectors such as telecommunication, automotive, biotechnology, software development, medicine, cosmetics and others.
We ignite and accompany you on your way to success.
Schaltzeit fills gaps, optimizes processes and forms the link between actors and processes in order to make results transparent and usable and sustainably establishes future-oriented thinking and acting.

CARMINE’s overarching goal is to help the metropolitan communities become more climate resilient, by co-producing knowledge-based tools, strategies and plans for enhanced adaptation and mitigation actions addressing the Charter of the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change by 2030.

To achieve this goal, focusing on a 2030-2035 timeframe and with longer perspectives up to 2050, CARMINE aims to:

✅ Co-create and co-develop decision-support services and guidelines for enhanced resilience and adaptive capacity, including early warning and disaster risk management systems;

✅ Cooperate closely with local to regional communities (stakeholders and users), decision and policy-makers (local authorities) to co-develop cross-sectoral frameworks for adaptation and mitigation actions;

✅ Deliver science-based R&I roadmaps for multi-level climate governance supporting local adaptation assessments and plans.

Obj. 1. Review the available resources, tools, practices, policies, and methodologies, and identify the gaps, challenges and barriers that hamper the successful advance of the resilience pathways in the Metropolitan Regions of Europe.

Obj. 2. Develop high-resolution risk assessment models linking climate, earth system processes, and socio-economic drivers, for enriched data fusion and effectiveness of adaptation and mitigation actions in the Metropolitan Regions of Europe.

Obj. 3. Co-produce a climate adaptation and resilience framework combining Living Labs and Digital Twins approaches that supports decision making processes for resilience and disaster risk management in the Metropolitan Regions of Europe, including Nature-Based Solutions.

Obj. 4 Provide state-of-the-art Impact-based Decision Support Services blending climate and environmental data into socioeconomic impact and risk assessments, for user-friendly access to high spatially resolved modelling outputs in support of local adaptation assessments and plans.

Obj. 5 Conduct the participatory development of better coordinated and impactful modelling and risk assessment, in support of roadmaps of R&I priorities on adaptation, informed policies, and cross-sectoral plans towards the 2030-2035 timeframe and beyond (i.e., 2050).

CARMINE establishes synergies and complementarities with ongoing projects funded under the calls HORIZON-MISS-2021-CLIMA-02-03: ICARIA, MIRA CA, and R ISKADAPT, and HO RIZON-MISS-2021-CLIMA-02-01: CLIMAAX. 

To help navigate current and future uncertainty and disruptive change, while effectively delivering on its mandate, UNEP has been implementing an institutionalized approach to strategic foresight and horizon scanning with the view to developing an anticipatory and future-oriented culture. This mirrors the growing interest and demand for foresight that is also reinforced by the United Nations reform agenda and the Secretary-General’s report on ‘Our Common Agenda’, which calls for all UN agencies, as well as all UN member states, to engage foresight practices more deeply and apply the derived insights to address global systemic risks. This process has culminated in the development of the present report “Navigating New Horizons – A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing”, produced by UNEP in collaboration with the International Science Council. The report calls for the world to pay heed and respond to a range of emerging challenges that could disrupt planetary health and wellbeing. It presents insights on eight critical global shifts that are accelerating the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity and nature loss and pollution and waste. Eighteen signals of change – identified by hundreds of global experts and distilled through regional and stakeholder consultations that included youth – offer a glimpse into potential disruptions, both positive and negative, that the world needs to keep a watching brief on. 

The report outlines how to create an enabling environment for better decision-making by creating a new social contract, embracing agile and adaptive governance, and increasing integrated accessible data and knowledge. The report offers a stark reminder of the interconnectedness and fragility of our systems in the 21st Century and warns that prioritizing short-term gains over anticipatory action and preparedness jeopardizes long-term prosperity and planetary health. However, it also points to the tremendous potential and human ingenuity that can be leveraged in the spirit of discovery and cooperation to deliver solutions across the triple crisis. The outcomes of the report will be integrated into UNEP’s strategic planning, potentially influencing the next UNEP Medium-Term Strategy, presenting an opportunity to consider expanding programmes in areas like artificial intelligence, new technology, and robotics in agriculture, prompting discussions on the level of engagement in these issues. This will ultimately serve UNEP in adopting a proactive posture and modernize tools for efficiency and cost savings.

Source: UN Environment - Document Repository - Knowledge Repository - UNEP Publications - Technical Reports  

📣 YouthDecide 2040 is looking for participants to join our regional workshops and co-create the future of European democracy!

Be part of a one-and-a-half-day immersive workshop where diverse voices come together to imagine and shape resilient, thriving European democracies.

🗣️💬 Through creative, participatory foresight activities, we will explore different visions of democracy in 2040—your perspective matters!

🧭 The wider, the better
Are you a European resident over 18? This call is for you!
We're fostering intergenerational discussions on the future of European democracy, centring youth voices (18-34).

🔓 The call for applications will remain open through May 2025. 

About

The LifeFactFuture (LFF) project combines world class-excellence of Finnish life science companies, technology companies and academic researchers. It seeks to enhance advanced pharmaceutical and life science manufacturing in Finland.

The LFF consortium includes research teams at the University of Turku and the University of Helsinki, as well as some of Finland’s leading life science manufacturers, data and technology companies. The goal of the project collaboration is to speed up the introduction of digital solutions and more efficient utilization of data and to make Finland the most attractive place in the world for investments in data-driven life science manufacturing.

Current global vendors for pharmaceutical manufacturing are not able to provide the critical future data capabilities already identified by the sector in Finland. The data-driven capabilities offered by life science manufacturing vendors are assessed as less mature than similar solutions for other manufacturing sectors such as the automotive industry.

If Finland becomes the lighthouse for exploiting new data-driven capabilities in advanced life sciences manufacturing, new billion-euro export opportunities are on the horizon. The export potential is considerable within the life science sector itself as well as within technology industry companies supplying the life science sector with data-driven capabilities.

LFF is designed to fulfill the following objectives:

World-class, interdisciplinary research published in high-level journals.
Map the transformative potential of data-driven capabilities in pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Facilitate the design and adoption of regulatory practices in favor of agile/adaptive manufacturing.
Support the development of technology Proofs of Concept advancing data-driven life science manufacturing.
Progress made in developing sustainable business competencies in digital production environment.


The consortium is led by the Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku and
funded by Business Finland during 2024–2026.

Delivering solutions for a more sustainable future

ISINNOVA provides research services and strategic consultancy to public and private actors pursuing sustainable visions, solutions, and policies.

Five Pillars of Our Approach

1. Anticipate – Apply systems thinking and foresight methodologies to identify emerging challenges, reveal interdependencies, and inform proactive, future-resilient strategies.

2. Integrate – Connect disciplines, sectors, and knowledge systems to foster richer analysis and tackle complex challenges holistically.

3. Align – Ensure research, innovation, and governance processes reflect the values, priorities, and needs of society through ethical, participatory, and responsible approaches.

4. Co-create – Engage diverse stakeholders — researchers, policymakers, citizens, and industry — in collaborative processes to design solutions that are inclusive, relevant, and impactful.

5. Transform – Drive systemic change by translating shared knowledge and co-created solutions into sustainable, scalable actions, supported by continuous assessment to ensure applicability, effectiveness, and long-term value.

Track Record

• 50+ years in the game (and counting).
• Involved in over 130 research projects (ISINNOVA designs, develops, and manages sector-specific & cross-sector EU and global projects)
• 15 staff members with multidisciplinary backgrounds (engineering, statistics, economics, politics, law, social sciences, computer science and media studies)
  

Supports the economic growth in South-East Europe by promoting innovative solutions and facilitating the transfer of technologies and know-how. 

The first organization in the South- East region to implement foresight methods to shape public policy.

Democracies in Europe have demonstrated resilience and modernisation in the face of various social and technological challenges. Democracy in the age of the Anthropocene will necessitate radical shifts in values, power relations and modes of governance, while also being built on the present, in all its diversity, paradox and insufficiency. Innovating to meet these challenges will require re-imagining how people living in democracies become equipped and supported to co-create resilient, democratic futures in Europe and beyond. Clear visions are needed to build strategies that allow for rethinking and redesigning spaces, institutions, instruments and ways to represent and include people in democratic governance. YouthDecide 2040 aims to support European Union democracy to rise to these challenges through evidence-based historical and contemporary knowledge, strategic foresight, and robust deliberation. 

Specifically, YouthDecide 2040 has the main objective to: co-create with European youth – and older generations, political and institutional actors, and organised civil society – coherent pathways to desired futures of democracy in the European Union in 2040. We translate our main objective into a series of research questions that need to be answered to support the work. Each question is connected to a key objective and corresponding work packages to support co-creation. All activities are planned to be inclusive and open processes – transparently documented along the way – to enable repetition and implementation beyond the life of the project. The project’s ambition is to reinvigorate democracy in and across Europe with visions and pathways – made with active and inclusive citizen participation – for becoming more resilient to current and future challenges. 

Preferred scenarios, and visions from YouthDecide 2040 will aim to inform research and innovation pathways. They will help ensure the alignment of future and ongoing research and innovation with the values and needs of the democratic societies within the EU that support their advancement. The YouthDecide 2040 consortium comprises 11 partners with research expertise in areas of democracy research, foresight, participatory deliberation, co-creation, strategy development, as well as partners working in youth representation and organization, democracy advocacy, design, and multimedia communication. The project duration is three years, until the end of 2027 and it has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101177438. 

4CF The Futures Literacy Company is a consultancy entirely focused on strategic foresight and long-term strategies. For nearly two decades, 4CF has been on the mission to help its clients prepare for an uncertain tomorrow. The Company has executed hundreds of projects for private companies, public institutions and international entities, including the European Commission and its agencies (EUDA, ENISA), FAO, UNFCCC, UNESCO, UNEP and UNDP. 4CF is at the forefront of global innovation, and actively contributes to the development of cutting-edge foresight tools, including 4CF HalnyX (Delphi platform), 4CF Sprawlr, 4CF FLEx.

The vision of FOSTER is to build a foundation from which a new Knowledge and Innovation System (KIS) for Europe’s food system can emerge. The current structure is insufficient to address the emerging challenges of nourishing people in a healthy and sustainable way. Key objective is to gain insights into how it can be built to be more inclusive and better governed. 

FOSTER shall help to transform Europe’s food system outcomes and will achieve this by: 

• building a FOSTER Platform including food system-state of the art knowledge, foresight by semi-automated Horizon scanning, trend and threats-analysis and new multi-dimensional scenarios of EU food systems to 2040; 
• implementing the FOSTER Academy – including four Summer Schools – for integrating food system-related disciplines and citizen science to enhance food system understanding across the ERA; 
• initiating and assessing a co-creation and co-learning process within six national resp. regional Citizen Driven Initiatives (CDIs), in which new knowledge, strategies and Action Research Agendas are gained; 
• scaling out and deep CDIs solutions and approaches to other territorial contexts; 
• studying different R&I mechanisms of policy support for mission-oriented R&I policy for food systems transformation, and analysing and ground-proofing them in each CDI; 
• strengthening science-policy interfaces by co-learning processes with external experts and developing recommendations for food systems R&I policies tailored to different geographies and sectors; 
• identifying the trigger points to help ‘unlock’ system lock-ins and support further dynamics towards system transformation; 
• and applying reflective monitoring on all FOSTER’s co-learning activities to develop insights into how the KIS can be broadened from an agricultural-KIS to a food system-KIS.
  

To inspire adoption of FOSTER learnings, over 20 workshops and a final conference will be conducted; scientific position papers and policy briefs will be widely communicated.