Article history: Received 16 January 2014 Received in revised form 18 April 2015 Accepted 19 May 2015 Available online 10 June 2015 As the need for anticipatory strategic decision-making increases at all levels of governance, there are growing demands for high quality and relevant contributions from Foresight exercises. In this regard, identification of strong and weak aspects of Foresight desi...

Futures research means observation and understanding of today’s operational environment as well as identification and positioning of future opportunities. Lots of technology foresight and assessment initiatives are being made, probably in virtually all countries of the world. Articles concerning foresight rarely include assessments of what kind of materials they are based on. If they do, descri...

In recent years, several countries have carried out large-scale technology foresight exercises. While these have been extensively discussed in the literature, less attention has been given to how foresight objectives are served through consultative processes which are not necessarily designated as ‘foresight’ but nevertheless seek to provide direction to publicly supported research and technolo...

Advanced warning of potential new opportunities and threats related to biodiversity allows decision-makers to act strategically to maximize benefits or minimize costs. Strategic foresight explores possible futures, their consequences for decisions, and the actions that promote more desirable futures. Foresight tools, such as horizon scanning and scenario planning, are increasingly used by gover...

Increasingly sophisticated hominin cognition is assumed to play an important role in major dispersal events but it is unclear what that role is. We present an agent-based model showing that there is a close relationship between level of foresight, environmental heterogeneity, and population dispersibility. We explore the dynamics between these three factors and discuss how they may affect the c...

This paper presents and compares two original approaches for technology assessment and foresight based on opposite paradigm: a management science approach (Multi-Criteria Decision-Making) versus a participatory approach (Prediction Market). These approaches are intended to support the management of a technology portfolio and the assessment of new technology by an IT organization. In order to ex...

Critics of Darwinian cultural evolution frequently assert that whereas biological evolution is blind and undirected, cultural change is directed or guided by people who possess foresight, thereby invalidating any Darwinian analysis of culture. Here I show this argument to be erroneous and unsupported in several respects. First, critics commonly conflate human foresight with supernatural clairvo...

In 2005, the United Kingdom (UK) through their Foresight programme, within the Government Office for Science (formerly the UK Office for Science and Innovation) launched a project to consider the future risks from infectious diseases for humans, animals and plants (http:// www.bis.gov.uk/foresight/our-work/projects/published-projects/infectious-diseases). Whilst defining these risks, Foresight ...

The evolution of foresight since its inception in the Nineties is a success story in terms of the prominence the approach has acquired as a process to support forward-looking opinion formation in society and support tool for policy-making. However, in spite of this apparent success, the perspectives for the future are unclear. The notion of “hype-disappointment cycles”, which has been developed...