Foresight

PREST Institute of Innovation Research Foresight: then and now (From Futures to Foresight) Ian Miles PREST/IoIR University of Manchester SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research Overview • The discovery of the future • Technology futures and science policy • Innovation research and futures studies • Technology Foresight • Fragmentation or Ferment? FS F IS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research Imagining a Better World protoFS Holbein From UTOPIA (1516) to the NEW ATLANTIS (1627) 10 Feb 2006 protoFS protoIS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Transforming the World Through Scientific Revolutions • Assumed complementarity of technological progress and social betterment • From More to more…. Satisfying needs and expanding desires • Scientific elite as critical agents • Progress displaced through space rather than time • (odd bits of forecasting, eg Petty on population trends – linked to birth of statistics) SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research The Discovery of the Future C19th Industrial Revolution – but also social and political upsurge. The future could, would be different …Not in Utopia, subterranean Fields, Or some secreted Island, heaven knows where! But in the very world, which is the world Of all of us,--the place where in the end We find our happiness, or not at all! William Wordsworth, 1805 “French Revolution, as it Appeared to Enthusiasts at its Commencement” SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research Fiction and the Future •Lyman Tower Sargent, 1976, „Themes in Utopian Fiction in English before Wells‟, Science Fiction Studies, 3 (3), pp275-82 •Darko Suvin, 1983, Victorian Science Fiction in the UK: The Discourses of Knowledge and of Power. Boston: G.K. Hall •I F Clarke, The Pattern of Expectation, Voices Prophesying War, etc…. 10 Feb 2006 protoFS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Fiction and the Future •Mercier’s L‟An 2440 published in France 1771 (UK 1772) – innovations and megaprojects help signify future •Sargent, English-language Utopias: 8 in C16th, 60 in C17th and 18th, 300+ in C19th •I F Clarke, The Pattern of Expectation, Voices Prophesying War, etc…. • future wars in fiction •Science fiction with educational and didactic missions (Verne, Wells) 10 Feb 2006 protoFS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Utopians vs Utopia (or industrial utopia) • Luddism and Pandemonium – technological change inescapable, but not always welcomed. • Political economists asked big questions, took long views • Change became assumed attribute of future (but Morris, Butler, technodystopias) • Marx – no recipes for the cookshops of the future • But scientific socialism: tended to identify technological change (growth in means of production will undermine obsolete relations of production) SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research Futures Studies – beyond Political Economy According to Clarke, dozens of “futures” books in 1890s and early 1900s, starting with Richet, 1892, Dans Cent Ans highlights include – • 1897, Gottleib, The War of the Future in its Technical, Economic and Political Relations • Collections by Edmund Carpenter in USA (social) H G Wells in UK (Anticipations of the reactions of mechanical and scientific progress upon human life and thought) round turn of century. Wells in 1902 articulated call for systematic study of future in The Discovery of the Future • Postwar: Kegan Paul Today and Tomorrow series (inc Haldane’s Daedalus 1924) both social and technological “genius forecasts” 10 Feb 2006 First World War – shattered many illusions of progress, delegitimised political elites FS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Wanted! Professors of Foresight “It seems an odd thing to me that though we have thousands and thousands of professors and hundreds of thousands of students of history working upon the records of the past, there is not a single person anywhere who makes a whole-time job of estimating the future consequences of new inventions and new devices. There is not a single Professor of Foresight in the world.” H G Wells (1932) FS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research (Technological) Forecasting • Technology multifaceted – decreasing scope for “genius” forecasts a la Haldane • 1930s crisis – US National Resources Committee – Recent Social Trends – William Ogburn and colleagues – social indicators, social forecasting, implications of agricultural technology – subMarxian model of technological change -Gilfillan and technological forecasting. Basic extrapolative techniques. • Military and aerospace forecasting: RAND, NASA, etc: methodological development – Delphi, systems analysis, scenarios. 10 Feb 2006 FS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research The Visible College* • Socialists tended to identify technological progress with social progress – current or deferred • In major crisis many scientists drawn to socialism • Haldane in 1920s: “"If we are to control our own and one another's actions as we are learning to control nature, the scientific point of view must come out of the laboratory and be applied to the events of daily life. It is foolish to think that the outlook which has already revolutionized industry, agriculture, war and medicine will prove useless when applied to the family, the nation, or the human race." • Scientific planning and science policy seen as close cousins -> (esp with WW2 applications of OR and statistics to decision making). Bernal inspiration » * cf Gary Werskey’s 10 Feb 2006 protoIS book SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research IS • Bernal inspiration • de Solla Price in US, Science Policy Research in UK…. • Innovation studies emerge – politically plural, but attractive to UK left (critique of capitalists if not of capitalism; alternative explanations for UK economic and technological problems – not organised labour, but disorganised management (cf PANTS). • Critique of (some) innovation – from Bernal (50s) through new left (60s), feminists (70s), greens (80s)… 10 Feb 2006 From Science Policy to Innovation Studies SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research The Techno-optimistic Future • US Commissions… • US framework of technological change (long-term multifold trend), post-industrialism, “end of ideoloogy”, etc • Kahn crystallised “futurology” with books like Thinking about the Unthinkable and the less military-focused Things to Come (1972) etc. • Recrudescence of ideology, global tensions • Nuclear technology (and eugenics?) further destabilised assumption of automatic complementarity of scientific/technological and social/moral progress. 10 Feb 2006 FS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research The Futures Movement FS • 1960s: futures studies took off very widely – centres, associations, consultancies formed, largescale projects launched. Think tanks and expert groups; indicators and models. • European futures partly emulated US technooptimistic models, but in large part focused more on political uncertainties and strategies – a “third way” – as earlier articulated by Jungk, Galtung, and in France Berger, de Jouvenel… and many more) • Limited uptake in UK: scepticism – Peculiarities of the English?? • Fairly rare to find bottom-up, participatory approaches (some radicals, some corporate, and la prospective) 10 Feb 2006 SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Limits to Futures • Futures debate – (population) Malthusians vs technooptimists, (development ) Marxists, structuralists, conservative economists • Club of Rome intervention 1970s (see Peter Moll From Scarcity to Sustainability 1991, Peter Lang) • HUGE media impact 10 Feb 2006 FS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Thinking about Models • SPRU critique of Limits – Thinking about the Future (UK) or Models of Doom (US). (not MWAC) Resources Food per capita Industrial production per capita population • Faulted data, analysis and methods on many points, but especially the lack of any notion of technological innovation as able to confront resource shortages (or tackle pollution). • Raised many questions of ecology, equity, etc. SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research Beyond Limits • SPRU researchers went on to review futures methods (Art of Anticipation) • Review the world futures debate and prepare a major intervention of their own (Freeman and Jahoda, World Futures: the Great Debate) – radically alternative scenarios – possibility of growth and more equity • Generate a series of futures studies (eg. Worlds Apart), critiques of the field (Luxury of Despair), social and policy analyses of FS (Uses and Abuses of Forecasting) • “something in the water at Sussex” 10 Feb 2006 FS IS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Innovation Systems Analysis • Technological revolutions (and long waves)  Technology / Technoeconomic Paradigms  Sociotechnical Systems (Gershuny reappraisal of postindustrial society; IT futures studies…) • Systemic sectoral varieties (Pavitt taxonomy, UK performance) • “Systems of innovation” approaches – national systems and their weaknesses…. The Japanese model (Freeman formulations 87/88 but Lundvall in SPRU 83/84) … 10 Feb 2006 IS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Innovation Policy • S&T policy: inadequacies of linear model • Public sector constraints (fiscal crisis of state, rise of neoconservativism) IT revolution: strategic research • Shortcomings of funding system • Search for new decision-making tools – ACARD and other reports on selecting critical technologies, promising areas of IS science, etc. SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research FS F IS • 1984: Irvine and Martin’s first book Foresight in Science (strong impression from Japanese experience… which had Nipponised US futures studies methods and applied them to Research Policy) • Picking the Winners - Oops! • Other battles being fought… • Martin & Irvine 1989 Research Foresight… more studies and then... 10 Feb 2006 Toward Foresight SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research UK Foresight Programme – “First Cycle” • Several 1990s efforts to determine critical technologies (involving SPRU, PREST and consultancies): this approach has been pursued in US and France, in particular. • 1993 White Paper: improve connection between science base & wealth creation + quality of life. Foresight a major instrument. • Specific goals: to inform priorities (planning) & promote “Foresight culture” of forward and longer term thinking “beyond the business plan” (futures, networking) • Initiatives in several other countries mid 90s 10 Feb 2006 FS F IS SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research UK (Technology) Foresight 1 Ben Martin on Steering Committee: undertook review of other Programmes; PREST undertook much methodological work • Accessing dispersed (delphi, other knowledge, sharing it through surveys, panel futures training…) • Informing R&D priorities Innovation studies • Networking (wiring up communities innovation system) engaged SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series FS F IS Widely viewed as major success 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research UK (Technology) Foresight 2 Focus on networking and creating knowledge communities No overall priority-setting Much work on thematic and more “social” issues FS F …. IS Problems of ownership in OST, DTI Crisis rapidly set in: review and early termination 10 Feb 2006 SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research UK (Technology) Foresight 3 More modest, project-based work No overall prioritisation Primary aim is now informing policy, transdepartmentally: enhancing the role of science. Little effort to rewire innovation system. FS F …. IS Most other countries following (diluted) F1 model, though some are more project-based 10 Feb 2006 SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research UK (Technology) Foresight 1 – “Fully-Fledged Foresight”? PARTICIPATION Access to distributed knowledge, establishing and reinforcing networks Networking tools and techniques, Networking groupwork and facilitation, survey approaches, etc Informing and legitimising action, establishing preparedness Sharing visions. Exchanging Foresight knowledge, mutual understanding... FS F IS Planning tools and techniques, OR and systems approaches, etc. PLANNING Priority lists, Strategic action plans Identifying indicators & determining goals, evaluation processes & mechanisms Futures methods, forecasting techniques, modelling & visionary approaches, etc. PROSPECTIVES Futures reports, scenarios, fore casts and visions SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research Participative Elements Technocracy – enlarging the knowledge base Transition Management – enlisting agents in visioning, ac tion SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series Democracy – engaging stakeholders opening dialogue 10 Feb 2006 PREST Institute of Innovation Research UKF has evolved • • • • From prioritisation + networking Through strong networking focus To policy-informing projects. (Leaving gaps in participation and prioritisation?) FS F …. IS • Design and implementation has become more remote from innovation studies constituency 10 Feb 2006 SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research Foresight on Foresight • UK F 3 is well-received, current strategy will be continued • Embedding Foresight in government departments will be a patchy affair, especially as some revert to “futures studies”, “horizon scanning”, etc. (varying foci and probably very uneven results) • Need for overall prioritisation will result in new initiatives (sooner or later) • Space for TA and participative approaches… • …Tensions between expertise, advanced methodology, and needs for networking and engagement. (especially with emergent technologies) – acute issue. • Roles for innovation researchers to be proactive as well as responsive. • Foresight reminds us to take the longer view: and don’t forget the wider ones! 10 Feb 2006 FS & IS More sweet music ? SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series PREST Institute of Innovation Research End of Presentation SPRU/CENTRIM seminars: SPRU 40th Anniversary Series 10 Feb 2006