Foresight: Turning Challenges into Opportunities

P. 1–8.

Gokhberg L., Meissner D., Sokolov A.

Foresight has gained much attention as a tool for developing and informing science, technology and innovation policy and company strategies. It is frequently used for detecting not only potential development paths of technologies but also possible economic and societal changes; and for identifying challenges that nations, societies and companies might face in the future. Raising awareness within the respective communities of trends and challenges is critically important—and the biggest challenge is how we can develop measures to meet these anticipated challenges. Paradoxically, perhaps, it may be more helpful for creating and implementing successful measures if these are elaborated by thinking about grasping opportunities, rather than framing them in terms of threats that have to be responded to. Accordingly there is a need to change the mindsets in science, technology and innovation policy making—and to engender solution and opportunity orientation among scientists and engineers.

Keywords: STI policy, innovation strategy, STI strategy, Foresight

Publication based on the results of: Science, technology and innovation policy: development of instruments and assessing their efficiency (2016)

In book

Deploying Foresight for Policy and Strategy Makers: Creating Opportunities Through Public Policies and Corporate Strategies in Science, Technology and Innovation

Netherlands: Springer, 2016.