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Technology foresight: Philosophy and principles

Greg Tegart
Executive Advisor, APEC Center for Technology Foresight, Bangkok, Thailand; Visiting Professor, Victoria University of Technology, Melbourne VIC

Article Text

Science and technology are vital to our society, economy and environment. They lead to wealth creation and improvement of the quality of life. Successful exploitation of technology has become critical to achieving economic competitiveness. However, we live in a world which is changing rapidly and where global environmental issues, such as climate change resulting from increasing emissions of greenhouse gasses or pollution of the oceans, are emerging as threats to our progress. To cope with these changes, our science and technology systems must be able to respond and change, either by adapting existing technologies or developing and applying new ones.

Strategic technology development is critical to the long-term competitiveness of economies and therefore of strategic interest to both governments and business. There are a number of strategic planning tools which can contribute to building links between government, academia and business and to identifying priority areas for investment. Some of these can be grouped under Forecasting and rely on trend data extrapolations or application of models to develop a unique future. These essentially assume that the future is an extension of the present and that the economy, society and technology will continue in a steady pattern. In this approach the risks associated with unforeseen events are usually minimized or not considered.

An entirely different set of techniques, usually grouped under Foresight, is concerned with the development of a range of possible futures which emerge from alternative sets of assumptions about emerging trends and opportunities. It is not based on extrapolation of existing patterns; it explicitly recognizes that the future is uncertain and that seriously disruptive events can and will happen. Most importantly the role of Foresight is not just to prepare well for the future but also to take every opportunity to shape and create the future.

The most extensive use of Foresight has been in Europe where every national government has conducted Foresight exercises to assist with national S&T planning. This has now been expanded to Europe-wide studies conducted by the EU in their thrust to develop a European Research Area, and also to regional studies often crossing national boundaries. It has been used on all the continents and its use in the APEC region, where the APEC Center for Technology Foresight (APEC CTF) has provided a stimulus, is increasing.

APEC CTF was established in Bangkok in February 1998 by the Royal Thai Government under the National Science and Technology Development Agency. The objective was to serve and involve all APEC economies in diffusing Foresight capability across the region. However the aim was not just to assist member economies with their own Foresight activities through training, consultancy and promotion of Foresight but also to conduct studies at a multi-economy level to develop technology collaboration leading to partnerships and alliances.

Definition and Rationale

Foresight is not a new technique; it has been developing over the past thirty years and various approaches have been used as noted later. We can distinguish three generations of Foresight so far:

First Generation-technology forecasts driven by researchers
Second Generation-technology futures linked to markets and driven by researchers and industry
Third Generation - futures linked to society and driven by researchers, industry and stakeholders

Various definitions of Foresight have been proposed and the current one used by APEC CTF reflects the Third Generation as:

‘Foresight involves systematic attempts to look into the future of science, technology, society and the economy, and their interactions, in order to promote social, economic and environmental benefit'.

There are a number of implications of this definition:

The attempts to look into the future must be based on careful analysis of the current situation, trends and expected impacts of developments
These attempts must be concerned with the medium to long-term, typically 10-20 years
Foresight is a process rather than a set of techniques and involves consultation and interaction between the scientific community, research users and policymakers
There needs to be an intention to lead to actions aimed at shaping the best possible future

A recent suggestion is that we can simplify this definition to: ‘Foresight is understanding the future'. Foresight addresses three major challenges posed by the future:

Complexity: cause and effect relationships are not always obvious. Thus causal factors may interact, there may be long time delays between the cause and the effect or there may be inter-societal differences
Uncertainty: many relationships are too complex to unravel completely. Even simple relationships may be associated with high uncertainty if the knowledge base does not exist or if people are powerless to affect the outcome
Ambiguity: differing interpretations of identical information and data are possible because people have different interests and beliefs

Elements of Foresight

A critical feature in setting up a Foresight process is to define the aim since this determines the nature of the linkage with the decision-making process. Six possible aims are:

Direction setting - broad guidelines in science policy and the development of an agenda of options
Determining priorities - an important aim of Foresight and the driving force in many of the documented country exercises against a background of resources restraint and increasing demands from researchers
Anticipatory intelligence - identification of emerging trends with major implications for future decision making
Consensus generation - promotion of greater agreement among scientists, funding agencies and stakeholders on identified needs or opportunities
Advocacy - promotion of policy decisions in line with preferences of specific stakeholders in the R&D system
Communication and education - promotion of internal communication within the scientific community, promotion of external communications with users of research and wider education of the general public, politicians and bureaucrats

There are thus a number of activities that can be gathered up loosely under the term Foresight, some relatively old, others quite recent in origin. There has been a widespread view that the economic, institutional and cultural context of different countries should influence the choice between national approaches and thus different countries have favored different techniques. In tackling multi-country Foresight the challenge is to strike a balance between the differing needs, opportunities and capabilities of the countries involved. APEC CTF now has considerable experience in this area, having carried out six multi-economy Foresight projects involving up to thirteen APEC economies in a project. These have covered a number of diverse subjects: Water Supply and Management, Technology for Learning and Culture, Sustainable Transport, Healthy Futures for APEC Megacities, Nanotechnology and DNA Diagnostics for Human Health in the Post-Genomic Era.

Fig.1: Factors Influencing Foresight

The essential components of Foresight are shown in Figure 1. In conducting a Foresight study it is necessary to maintain a balanced perspective between the 'science-push' and 'demand-pull' factors that influence future developments.

Science-push factors include the creation of new technological or commercial opportunities by scientific research, and the strength and resources to exploit them
Developments in technology and production can create a use for existing and novel science through the mechanism of demand-pull. Demand factors include the priorities and needs of the broader community

There can be problems in communication between proponents of science-push and demand-pull, particularly in their different time perspectives. The time horizon of those making the demands may be too short for an effective dialogue. Looking ahead together, through Foresight, can bridge this gap in many cases. Thus APEC CTF has used Foresight successfully to bring together quite disparate players to develop strategies for the construction industry in Malaysia and the food industry in Vietnam.

Because of the interactive nature of Foresight the outputs of the process can often be as important (or even more important!) as the products. We can list the process benefits as the six Cs:

Communication - bringing together disparate groups of people together and providing a structure within which they can interact and communicate
Concentration - on the longer term, so participants look further into the future than they otherwise might
Coordination - enabling different groups to form productive R&D partnerships
Consensus - so a clear picture of alternative future directions and research priorities can be formed
Commitment - generating a sense of commitment to the results among those who will be responsible for implementing changes in light of the foresight exercise; and
Comprehension - to encourage those involved to understand the changes happening in their business, or professions, at a global level, and to exert some control over these events

The success or otherwise of a Foresight exercise can be gauged by assessing it against these six criteria.

Experience has shown that Foresight can be carried out at several levels, ranging from bodies responsible for the coordination of overall national science and technology policy, through industrial associations down to individual companies or research organizations. Thus, some Foresight exercises need to be more macro level, or ‘holistic', in scope whilst others need to be focused at a more micro-level.

The essential features for a successful Foresight exercise are:

The aim of the Foresight activity needs to be explicitly defined at the beginning
R&D users, R&D producers and providers of funds are all involved
At least as much attention is paid to the 'bottom-up' as to the 'top-down' flow of advice
The implementation mechanism needs to be in place so that decisions made in the process can, and will be, implemented
The process is sensitive to the unexpected, so that plans can be modified
The process is not 'one-off', but is repeated at regular intervals to take account of feedbacks and new developments

A Foresight exercise can be divided into three parts:

The pre-Foresight phase-defining objectives, developing a concept paper, reviewing available material and if necessary commissioning new reviews (an important feature of the APEC CTF studies has been the production of state-of -the-art reviews by experts from different APEC economies)
The Foresight phase-using one or more of the techniques discussed below to bring groups of experts and stakeholders together to share ideas, develop visions of the future, draw out major issues, assess needs for action (APEC CTF has found the scenario creation technique to be a powerful one in this regard) and prepare a report
The post-Foresight phase -getting the report to policy makers and decision makers, and to stakeholders, following up with participants on outcomes and generally publicizing the conclusions (APEC CTF has found this to be the most difficult phase but also the most important)

Foresight Methodologies

As noted earlier, there are a number of activities that can be gathered up under the term Foresight and not surprisingly a number of methodologies have been developed. Several are described here:

1. Delphi Surveys - This uses experts to identify possible technological developments in say 10-20 years and to estimate the likelihood of their occurrence and realization time. The method involves sending a questionnaire to a large panel of experts repeatedly to encourage group interaction. The panel members usually have widely varying estimates in each question at the beginning of the process and convergence occurs as the process proceeds. However it is important to recognize that the outliers may sometimes have a better view of the future than the majority!

The Delphi technique has a number of advantages. Firstly, it permits a synthesis of the views of large numbers of experts. Secondly, it is suitable for looking at the longer- term and including possible changes. Thirdly, it is good at generating the process benefits (of consensus and concentration) described earlier. Lastly, it can be applied in different countries, thus allowing the researcher to compare the results to identify the effect of any national influences. Among the disadvantages are the fact that large-scale Delphi surveys can be expensive and time-consuming, and need the participation of a large number of experts if the results are to be statistically significant.

The Delphi technique has been extensively used in Asian countries, notably Japan, Korea and Thailand, and also in Europe mostly Germany and France.

2. Consultation - This uses a broad ranging approach across the community to develop perspectives on expected, possible and preferred futures on a longer-term basis (10-20 years). Expected futures are based on the analyses of experts and current trends and extrapolation. Possible futures provide a range of options for a world that might change significantly over time. Preferred futures are those that a community wants to achieve; they encompass individual values and aspirations, the strategies of corporations and community organizations and the plans of governments. By comparing these, it is possible to identify key issues and key forces for change that need to be addressed in developing a national strategy to reach the preferred future while coping with possible changes.

This technique is good at generating the process benefits of communication, coordination, commitment and comprehension described earlier. Like Delphi, the process can be expensive and time-consuming since large numbers of people are involved in consultations. Unlike Delphi, it tends to be country and culture specific and results cannot be compared readily.

The consultation technique has been used in Australia and the Netherlands. A recent exercise in the UK involved consultation as well as Delphi.

3. Scenario Creation - This uses a more focused approach than (3) to develop scenarios for the future and assess their implications. Small groups of experts and stakeholders review the current state of R&D in an area and identify likely developments in technology in a particular field over, say the next 10-20 years. They then identify drivers of change and uncertainties. The drivers of change can be grouped under the acronym STEEP: S- society, T- technology, E- economy, E-environment, P-politics. The groups then speculate on possible, even improbable, uncertainties, which could occur to change the pattern of development, e.g. epidemics, wars, natural events such as earthquakes. Scenarios are then created using combinations of these to produce coherent pictures of alternative futures. By ‘backcasting' from these scenarios critical decision points can be identified to provide a basis for strategy development to allow a flexible response to dramatic change.

The scenario creation technique has been used by corporations notably Shell and by research organizations to develop business strategies and to aid in priority setting. APEC CTF has found it to be an effective technique in multi-economy studies. The technique is good at generating the process benefits of the 6 Cs described earlier.

4. Patent Analysis - This is a short-term approach which uses patent databases to identify emerging technologies and their possible applications in other fields. It is a well-known technique used for corporate innovation planning and competitor analysis, but care is needed when using patent data for Foresight analysis. Most national data are biased towards the country of origin and cannot be used for true international comparisons. It perhaps is better classed as a Forecast technique since little account is taken of uncertainties.

The main advantage is that patent analysis can be performed with on-line databases on a regular scale with moderate costs and labor investment. It has been used in Germany by high technology companies.

5. Critical Technologies - This technique uses a small selected group of experts on a one-off basis to develop a list of generic technologies relevant to the future economic development of an industry or a country. It has been used to define critical technologies for industry and for defense in the US and also for S&T in France.

The main advantage is that it is relatively easy to carry out the exercise. The disadvantages are that, since it is generally unstructured, it achieves little of the process benefits of Foresight and the results are biased by the strongest opinions in the group. Further, the results tend to be too general to be useful for detailed strategy or priority development.

6. Technology Roadmapping - This provides a way to identify, evaluate and select strategic routes which can be used to achieve a desired industrial objective. It has proved to be a powerful means for establishing technology cooperation, even amongst competitors. A useful definition of technology roadmapping comes from Industry Canada as:

‘Technology roadmapping is a needs-driven technology planning process to help identify, select and develop technology alternatives to satisfy a set of product needs.'

A key advantage of technology roadmaps is that they are driven by future market or product requirements and thus can achieve a clear sense of purpose and ownership as well as indicating infrastructure and human resource needs. Recent applications in APEC economies have been the information and communication technologies in Korea, the electro-mechanical industry in Chinese Taipei and the renewable energy industry in Australia.

Concluding Remarks

Foresight is now widely accepted as a means of focusing the efforts of the scientific and technological community (in the broadest sense) towards wealth creation and improvement of the quality of life in a society. The primary rationale is the widespread recognition that emerging generic technologies, eg biotechnology, nanotechnology, genome science, are likely to have a revolutionary effect on industries, the economy, society and the environment over coming decades. If one can identify and examine such emerging technologies at an early stage, governments and industry can target resources on the strategic research areas needed to ensure rapid and effective development and also can examine the ethical, social and legal issues arising from application of the technologies.

While there are various methodologies for carrying out the Foresight process, it is clear from experience that the economic, social and cultural contexts of different countries and of different industries can influence the choice of the methodology used. In some cases combinations of methodologies can be extremely effective, eg scenario and Delphi. The experience of APEC CTF is that Foresight can be an extremely effective tool for strategic technology planning at multi-economy, national and industry levels.

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