A Case Study in Participatory Priority Setting for a Scandinavian Research Program

Continuing attempts to align science and technology policies with industrial and societal needs have aroused interest in the determination of research priorities. In this paper, we report a case study where leading experts from industry and public administration were assisted by multicriteria decision analysis in the planning of a collaborative research program for Scandinavian forestry and forest industries. We also address processual and methodological challenges in the deployment of multicriteria methods, and argue that such methods can contribute to the quality of decision support processes in related contexts.