The Evolution of Strategic Foresight

Navigating Public Policy Making

Tuomo Kuosa

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317032496
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Embracing the theory and practice of strategic foresight and illuminating how different schools of thought regard its role in policy making, Tuomo Kuosa describes how something not traditionally considered an independent discipline, is steadily becoming one. In The Evolution of Strategic Foresight he explains how the practice of strategic foresight has long been closely associated with the military and politics. Linking strategic thinking more broadly to futurology, however, it is quite new. Since strategic foresight refers to the practice of generating analyses of alternative futures and strategies, based on available intelligence and foreknowledge, the practice can and should be applied to companies, business sectors, national and trans-national agencies of all descriptions, and to all aspects of public policy making. The author explains its practice in terms of structure, process, and knowledge domains, and examines its methodologies and systems, along with how strategic foresight can be used to produce better knowledge and be more effectively linked to policy making. Using examples from 30 different countries and with access to interviews and workshops involving key experts, The Evolution of Strategic Foresight will be valuable to scholars, educators, students engaged in strategy and future studies, long-range, public policy and urban planners, analysts; risk assessment experts, and consultants, managers and decision makers in many organisations, public and private.

PART I
Knowledge

He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.

Sun Tzu

Introduction

The objective of this book is to introduce the extension and boundaries of contemporary strategic foresight and discuss the long evolution and foundations of its theory and practice. The analysis method used attempts to go beyond the surface level of just listing the definitions, parts and used practices. That is why I use many chapters to discuss our contemporary understanding of the ‘game situation’ and the inferring methods that the strategic foresight is dealing with. In the time of Sun Tzu, the ‘game situation’ of a battle was understood as something very dynamical, all the time changing and contextual, and the available methods were considered highly flexible. The systemic understanding of the ‘game situation’ of a battle or transformation was changed towards mechanical view in the seventeenth century, and it was not until the 1970s when the dynamical systemic view, and understanding of co-evolution and complexity, started to re-emerge. Yet both the management and foresight of the 1970s were still very linear and control oriented in comparison to the contemporary approaches that are beginning to focus on paradoxes, interpretations and social glue instead of dilemmas, categories and structure.

Because the world has changed, and is much more knowledge intensive, broader in many senses, technological, better educated and more hectic, in comparison to Sun Tzu’s times, the available methods and inferring principles have evolved too. That is why I devote numerous chapters to discussing the usability of scientific method and different epistemological and methodological approaches in present foresight and strategy work. Hence, contemporary strategic foresight should simultaneously utilize many tools and principles to deal with the co-evolutive ‘game situations’ where there may be no dominating centres and where knowledge ages very fast.

1
Introduction

After studying these seven conditions I can forecast which side wins and which loses.

Sun Tzu

This book is organized into four parts. The first three parts ‘Knowledge’, ‘Structure’, and ‘Process’ echo Aristotle’s three ‘domains of the world’. The final part is ‘Discussion’, which summarizes the conclusions and synthesizes the themes discussed into new observations.

The first part of the book, ‘Knowledge’, focuses on strategic foresight theory, including its concepts, methodologies, research strategies and philosophy of science. It defines the concepts of future domains, strategic thinking and intelligence, and the logic behind evolutionary, complexity and systems thinking, together with the logic and practices of scientific and informal reasoning. Finally it aggregates existing foresight methods, methodological principles and research strategies into a new set of futures domain’s which itself is divided into ten major methodologies and their subsets. This presentation is meant to help readers understand the usability and fundamental nature behind the domain’s different method types and to help plan an integrated strategic foresight process.

The second part, ‘Structure’, presents the public strategic foresight system of 23 countries, regions, federations, or other transnational thematic areas of the world. These cases are mainly from the European Union as some of the agents of its member states, such as France’s General du Plan, and some individual European researchers, have been willing to map the European Union’s old and new member states foresight systems for public policy making. Outside Europe, Singapore and the United States (US) are given as examples, as these two countries have put considerable effort into strengthening their national security through various intelligence practices. This part concludes with discussion of the strategic foresight systems of three transnational organizations, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

The third part, ‘Process’, presents the views and suggestions of selected ‘strategic foresight knowledge producers’ and ‘strategic foresight knowledge users such as policy makers and high government officials’. These experts have been selected based on their specific experience and knowledge of the different sides of strategic foresight. This part of the book describes the practice and practical suggestions for public strategic foresight. It begins with questions such as, ‘how could strategic foresight better facilitate national decision making’, ‘how would you measure the success of foresight work’, and ‘how could we improve our public strategic foresight systems’. The ‘Process’ part is based on my work and the book1 that I wrote at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore when I worked there as a post-doctoral fellow in 2010.

The final part, ‘Discussion’, concludes the book. It contains two autonomous parts. The first is written by Henry Kwok, a long-term strategic management consultant from Singapore, who I asked to write about his understanding of the themes from a strategic management point of view. This chapter can stand alone as a solid article in answer to the question, ‘how can we produce better strategic understanding for strategic decision making?’ It is also an important summarizing part of the book, which merges its three focal themes, systems and evolutionary thinking, foresight thinking, and strategic management into a new type of management approach.

The other discussion chapter is my summary of the 23 international country cases and the views of the nine interviewed strategic foresight experts. This chapter also presents a new type of centrally steered public strategic foresight system, and a practical table that aggregates the book’s systemic themes, inferring and methodology themes, and foresight themes, into a list, which summarizes the suitability of different futures domain methods in the seven most common types of systems logics. This list2 can be used in planning different types of strategic foresight processes for different research contexts or purposes.

1 Kuosa, Tuomo (2011a): Practicing strategic foresight in government: The cases of Finland, Singapore and European Union. RSIS Monograph No. 19. S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies of Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Booksmith.

2 This book’s copyright figures and tables can be freely borrowed by anyone in their original form, or be further modified, as long as the valid citing to this book is attached inside the figure or in the title line.

2
Foresight Concepts

Foreknowledge enables the wise general to achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men.

Sun Tzu

What is Foresight?

The term foresight was used for the first time in a BBC broadcast in 1932 by visionary author H.G. Wells, who called for the establishment of ‘Departments and Professors of Foresight’. Here it refers to a process of visioning alternative futures through a combination of hindsight, insight and forecasting. That kind of foresight attempts to say something about future probabilities and options for actions. (Hind)sight is about systematically understanding the past, (In) sight is about systematically understanding the true nature of the present,1 and (Fore)sight is about systematically understanding the future.

Foresight and futures studies are intertwined in many ways. The guiding principle in both is that in almost all cases the future cannot be predicted, as it is not here yet. At best, alternative scenarios and some probabilities can be given to social phenomena, as they are too complex to be foreseen. Yet, the future can be created through the actions of today – and therefore can be partly known too. And much of the future is here already in today’s values, objectives, drivers and trends, and that can be studied systematically. Two things are of particular concern in both foresight and futures studies:2

• Concern of the longer-term futures that are at least 10 years away (though there are some exceptions to this in foresight, especially in its use in private business – see business intelligence).

• Concern of the alternative futures. It is helpful to examine alternative paths of development, not just what is currently believed to be most likely or usual. Often futures work will construct multiple scenarios. These may be an interim step on the way to creating what may be known as positive visions, success scenarios, or aspirational futures. Sometimes alternative scenarios will be a major part of the output of futures work.

On the other hand, foresight and futures studies have several things in contrast too. For example, the origins of the two are different. The roots of futures studies can be traced back to the humanistic orientation of Futurology3 (1972), which will be discussed in the next sub-chapter, the history of foresight/technocratic orientation of futures studies, can be traced back to military strategies and military technology foresight particularly in US military’s research units and think tanks, such as RAND (Research and Development – a mutual project of US Army Air Corps and Douglas Aircraft Company) in 1940s and 1950s.4 Today, much of the technology in foresight work, that is systematic and which involves various technology fields’ experts, is called technological assessment, but it can also be called technological foresight. Nowadays, the biggest differences between these two concepts are, i) time range, as foresight pursues to longer time range meaning at least 10 years away, and ii) the creation of alternatives, as foresight emphasizes the creation of alternatives, but technological assessment favours systematic planning, for example, roadmapping and a large group of experts in Delphi.

The word foresight has earlier origins than concept futures studies or futurology, but it was not until the late 1980s that it began to be increasingly used. By then it started to gain specific reference to approaches to informing decision-making, by improving inputs concerning the longer-term future and by drawing on wider social networks than had been the case in most ‘futures studies’ or long-range planning.5 To specify the approach of foresight, we can say that it attempts to become more systematic, logical, participatory and planning or management oriented, but it has less rational value in comparison to futures studies.

The strategic foresight group defines foresight simply as a combination of forecasting with insight. According to the group, foresight is developed by applying forecasting methodology to the insight. And while forecasting requires methodologies, generated by computers or otherwise, insight requires a deep understanding of the subject concerned. However, despite the strategic foresight group’s definition being quite clear, it is too narrow to cover the whole idea of foresight and particularly strategic foresight.

Another way to define foresight has been presented by Richard Slaughter,6 who defined it as a process that attempts to broaden the boundaries of perception in four ways:

• By assessing the implications of present actions, decisions, etc. (consequent assessment).

• By detecting and avoiding problems before they occur (early warning and guidance).

• By considering the present implications of possible future events (proactive strategy formulation).

• By envisioning aspects of desired futures (preparing scenarios).

On th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Reviews for The Evolution of Strategic Foresight
• Knowledge
• Introduction
• Foresight Concepts
• Strategic Concepts
• Evolutionary Concepts
• Inferring in Theory
• Inferring in Foresight
• Structure
• Principles of Strategic Foresight in Public Policy Making
• Strategic Foresight in the European Union's Older Member States' Public Policy Making
• Strategic Foresight in the European Union's Ten New Member State's Public Policy Making
• Strategic Foresight in the Public Policy Making of other Countries and Transnational Organizations
• Process
• How Could the Strategic Foresight Process Better Facilitate National Decision Making? – Views of Policy Makers and High Government Officials
• How Could the Strategic Foresight Process Better Facilitate National Decision Making? – Views of Strategic Foresight Knowledge Producers
• How Could We Improve Our Public Strategic Foresight Systems? – Views of Strategic Foresight Knowledge Producers
• How Could We Improve Our Public Strategic Foresight Systems? – Views of Policy Makers and High Government Officials
• Discussion
• Trilogy of Systems Thinking, Foresight and Strategic Management1
• Adjusting Foresight, Intelligence and Inferring for Different Types of Systems
• Bibliography
• Index