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One Day in 2050

One Day in 2050 is a collaborative project for climate change activation, made by 365 fictional news from 2050 (one for each day) written by 365 voices from the future to teach us how CC will reshape our society. A 365 degrees unique vision on the future of our planet. Open Call for Contributions.

Posted on: 04/11/2024

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Travelling into the [future] December 2021 - September 2022


Travelling into the [future] (spanish: Viajando al [futuro]) is a long-term project aimed at developing desirable future scenarios for sustainable tourism in Spain together with local stakeholders and experts in the field. The project is funded by the European Climate Foundation and implemented in a collaboration between Futures Probes and Tipi. 


Process & Methodology

The project was structured into three main phases: Research, Crowdsourcing, Storytelling.

  • In the research phase, a PESTLE analysis and the elaboration of local stakeholder maps identified environmental key factors and networks.
  • In the crowdsourcing phase, participatory workshops with local stakeholders and a Delphi survey with tourism experts were run in parallel, built upon and at the same time challenging the knowledge gathered in the previous phase. 
  • In the Storytelling phase, the results were used as the fundament for building six future scenarios, visualised as a written narrative accompanied by an illustration. 

Outcome

  • Building up and strengthening local stakeholder networks and generating ideas for future sustainable tourism(s). Gathering of key insights on desirable, possible and likely future developments of tourism in Spain. 
  • Identification and discussion of needs, desires, worries and attitudes of tourism stakeholders – in its complexity and diversity. 
  • Six future scenarios to inspire can activate communities, organisations and citizens to define measures that accelerate the transformation towards a better, more sustainable tourism.

Next steps

  • Developing indicators to measure the performance of (future) touristic activities in terms of their sustainability.
  • Creating a network of change agents within the tourism sector to exchange experiences, needs, knowledge and to collectively identify possible synergies and action steps to be taken.
  • Designing experimental pilot projects focusing on solving some of the concrete challenges identified as common to one or all of the regions observed.

Posted on: 04/11/2024

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Future Forward


Future Forward is a 20-lesson program to support (young) people in their exploration of the future. 


Futures Literacy

In our ever-changing world, parents, caregivers, teachers, and educators are faced with the challenge of preparing children for a future that is difficult to predict. How can we equip ourselves and younger generations with the necessary tools and skills to navigate the unknown? This is where futures literacy comes into play. While no-one can truly predict the future, by integrating future thinking into education, we acquire the tools to anticipate and navigate the complexities of an uncertain world, fostering innovation, adaptability, and resilience, in line with the goals of the European Year of Skills (May 2023 – May 2024). 

Future Forward, a 20-lesson program offers a unique opportunity for parents, teachers, and anyone curious about the exploration of the future. This crash course into foresight provides insights into future thinking, anticipation and foresight, opening doors to a better informed and imaginative future.


The Topics

The lessons resolve around 5 topics:  

• Perception of time; How we perceive time is connected to how we understand the future. Explore your perception of time and the future from multiple perspectives to help develop your futures literacy.  

• Futures mindset; Learn to see the world as a futurist! By challenging assumptions, developing a critical gaze, and understanding the interconnectedness of the world, you can imagine possible and preferable futures.  

• Multiple futures; There is no single future, but a landscape of constantly emerging and evolving possibilities. Contemplate a plurality of scenarios and visions for some of this century’s most pressing issues.  

• Investing in imaginations; How do we begin to imagine more than one viable future? When we open our imaginations, the possibilities become endless. We each have the capacity to explore, shape and imagine alternative futures.  

• Taking action; Imagine your ideal world 20 years in the future. What does it look like? How can you achieve it? Learn how you can take an active role in creating a better and more positive tomorrow.  

UNESCO champions a capability-based approach to using-the-future. Futures Literacy empowers the innate human capacity to imagine, it is a skill that everyone can develop. In becoming futures literate we enhance our agency, developing our abilities to identify novelty, prepare, adapt and invent as changes occur in the complex world we live in. More reading UNESCO 

Enjoy your classes at Future Forward

Co-Curation 

Future Forward is a co-development of the European Commission and TED-Ed and has been designed in co-creation with our co-curators from the foresight field. 


Theme 1: Perception of Time in co-curation with the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) by Jennifer Gidley

WFSF is a UNESCO and UN consultative partner and global NGO with members in over 60 countries, bringing together academics, researchers, practitioners, students and institutions. WFSF offers a global forum for stimulation, exploration and exchange of ideas, visions, and plans for alternative futures, through long-term, big-picture thinking and radical change. Jennifer Gidley is the Former President of WFSF (2009-2017). She is Adjunct Professor, UTS Sydney, a leading international scholar on human-centred futures, and author of The Future: VSI (Oxford).  

Theme 2: Futures Mindset in co-curation with Teach the Future (TTF) by Lourdes Rodríguez

The Teach the Future community is dedicated to bring futures thinking to schools, educators, and students around the world. By teaching the future you can equip young people to face uncertainty and help them envision and create their preferred future. Lourdes Rodríguez is global hubs director at Teach the Future. She is a senior foresight consultant, specialized in trends analysis. Recognized as one of the top futurists in Spain by Forbes.  

Theme 3: Multiple Futures in co-curation with Next Generation Foresight Practitioners (NGFP) by Ollie Bream McIntosh NGFP’s mission is to identify, accelerate, amplify, and connect a Global South-anchored network of emerging next-generation foresight practitioners to leverage power for transformation. Ollie Bream McIntosh is a researcher and designer specialized in sustainable futures. Formerly a director of several social enterprises, including design studio Social Systems Lab, and an Associate at the University of Nottingham, where he led the design and delivery of an award-winning course in Futures Studies. Ollie now leads the development of new transdisciplinary research ecosystems on the theme of social transformation at Erasmus University Rotterdam. 

Theme 4: Imagine Futures in co-curation with Association of Professional Futurists (APF) by Stuart Candy

APF’s mission is to advance the practice of professional foresight by fostering a dynamic, global, diverse, and collaborative community of professional futurists and those committed to futures thinking who expand the understanding, use, and impact of foresight in service to their stakeholders and the world. Stuart Candy, PhD is Director of Situation Lab and Associate Professor of Social Foresight at Parsons School of Design in New York, and Advisor to NASA JPL in Los Angeles. His publications include the edited collection Design and Futures, creativity game The Thing From The Future, and public imagination toolkit The Futures Bazaar, winner of the APF’s inaugural award for Inclusive Foresight.  

Theme 5: Taking Action in co-curation with UN Global Pulse Finland foresight specialists Tiina Neuvonen, Lucia Soriano Irigaray & Claudia Sáenz Zulueta UN Global Pulse is the Secretary-General’s Innovation Lab.

They work at the intersection of innovation and the human sciences to strengthen the ability of the United Nations and those it serves to respond and adapt to challenges, and anticipate them in future. Tiina Neuvonen is the Strategic Foresight Lead at UN Global Pulse Finland. She works at the intersection of social sciences, development and innovation. Formerly, she worked on UNESCO’s innovation portfolio, and has a background in strategy consulting and service design. Lucía Soriano Irigaray is a Strategic Foresight Analyst at UN Global Pulse Finland, and focuses on policy innovation. She has a background working on public affairs, international relations and climate change. Claudia Saénz Zulueta is a Strategic Foresight Senior Analyst at UN Global Pulse Finland, specializing in participatory futures and anticipatory strategy. She is driving social impact and innovation and her goal is to empower individuals to shape inclusive and transformative visions of their futures. 

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Posted on: 04/11/2024

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Road-STEAMer

Road-STEAMer attempts to develop a STEAM Roadmap for Science Education in Horizon Europe and in educational policy across the continent in order to: 

  • To produce better knowledge and shared understanding of Europe’s particular educational needs and how STEAM can address them.
  • To explore the opportunities arising through STEAM for integrated science learning approaches and synergies.
  • To study those policy deficiencies that hinter the impactful adoption of STEAM approaches in Europe’s science education landscape.

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Posted on: 04/11/2024

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GovTech Connect

What is GovTech Connect?


GovTech Connect is a is a multi-year, cross-border project, created under DG CONNECT of the European Commission, that entails a variety of initiatives convening and mobilising the GovTech innovation ecosystem - bringing together SMEs, public and private GovTech gamechangers, investors, civil society, academia and NGOs to create solutions with lasting impact.

The GovTech Connect Community is a space where everyone can share their knowledge and experience to grow together. This Collection conveys the results of GovTech Connect’s studies, events and news, along with the interesting content from other communities related to GovTech in Europe. GovTech Connect will spread the word and share content.

Specifically, GovTech Connect will spread the word and share content about:


1. GovTech market trends in Europe
2. European GovTech initiatives
3. Design thinking methodology and citizen engagement for GovTech solutions development


As part of these activities, GovTech Connect will see the launch of four European Boot camps to best prepare GovTech start-ups for collaboration with the public sector, as well as co-creative solution design with citizens. Webinars, workshops and other events will be occasions for networking and knowledge sharing.

The activities will be carried out by a consortium led by Intellera Consulting, with partners PUBLIC, Lisbon Council and Politecnico di Milano.The GovTech Connect project marks a major milestone in the advancement of the GovTech agenda to empower and accelerate public sector innovation across Europe (and beyond).

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Posted on: 04/11/2024

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FORGING

Industry-Academia Forum to Uncover the Potential of Emerging Enabling Technologies


The context

Technological breakthroughs empowered by enabling technologies hold a transformation potential that can be funneled to address industrial and societal grand challenges, like greening and digitalisation. To exploit this transformative potential, the innovation journey that leads new emerging technologies to their market-uptake shall embed value-sensitive considerations, such as environmental and societal implications.

The FORGING Solution

FORGING proposes a new methodology that breaks linear innovation trajectories to stimulate new technological visions and pathways attentive to the environment and society, and human-centred in alignment with Industry 5.0. technological frameworks. FORGING will create enabling frameworks to accelerate the pick-up of novel and responsible enabling technologies: through the development of 6 Technological Pathways, emerging enabling technologies will be positioned at their maturity levels and their deployment and industry absorption will be promoted for positive societal impact.

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Posted on: 04/11/2024

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Future risks

Decision makers are faced with a world characterised by increasing turbulence, uncertainty, novelty, and ambiguity. These conditions make it more difficult to assess risks when making strategic decisions or planning for the long-term. This project from the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) EU Policy Lab starting 2023 presents a foresight approach to increase preparedness for unexpected developments and the risks they could create.

Foresight methods offer a way to consider and focus on risks that may be beyond the scope of traditional quantitative and qualitative risk assessment approaches. Several snapshots of the future depict different worlds that have undergone substantial changes as a consequence of emerging developments. An analysis of the risks inherent in the possible futures identified ten risk clusters that are relevant for decision makers, and mapped future developments that might lead to them.The same development pathways that could lead to risks can also create opportunities, and the study provides some examples. Decision makers face the challenge of mitigating the adverse effects of risks, while reaping the benefits of potential opportunities. This study also presents the results of a Delphi survey that evaluated the scope and severity of risks. Three of the 40 risks identified in this study were assessed to be potentially existential for humanity: 1) environmental degradation, 2) environmental disasters, and 3) loss of power by humans. The project started in 2023 and will run until 2024. Next in the development is an engagement tool for policymakers to push the boundaries of foresight on risks in their specific policy making domain. Stay tuned for its launch, later in autumn 2024! 

Download the Risks on the horizon report  

Read the blog post from the authors  

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Posted on: 31/10/2024

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MUSAE August 2022 - July 2025

MUSAE aims to set up a Human-Centred Factory Model, based on the Design Future Art-driven (DFA) method, and integrate it into a (European) Digital Innovation Hubs (DIHs) network, to support companies in guiding strategic digital technology innovation and address future challenges in the food domain to improve people and planet wellbeing. 


MUSAE will establish a deep connection with the S+T+ARTS ecosystem, bringing together expertise in design, art, nutrition and wellbeing, and human-machine interaction. MUSAE will run 20 S+T+ARTS residencies involving 20 artists and 10 tech companies working with 3 main technologies – Artificial Intelligence, Wearables, and Robotics – to envision 10 future scenarios for technologies application and design 10 prototypes, thus opening up new markets and innovations. To validate replicability, MUSAE will set up and activate one Factory within the DIH partner and create the Factory Model Pack and the Label that will allow other DIHs to adopt it.

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Posted on: 31/10/2024

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European R&I foresight and public engagement for Horizon Europe

This project aims at:

i) providing timely foresight intelligence and forward-looking policy briefs to the European Commission for purposes of R&I policy on the following topics:

  • Futures of interpenetration of criminal and lawful economic activities 
  • Futures of Science for Policy in Europe 
  • Futures of using nature in rural and marine contexts in Europe
  • Futures of Social Confrontations
  • Futures of Green Skills and Jobs
  • Futures of Big Tech
  • Futures of innovation and IP regulation

ii) providing a hub for Europe’s R&I foresight community and a space in which foresight agencies and researchers can share knowledge and tools;

iii) networking EU supported R&I projects with important foresight elements and promoting their results to policymakers, including via Horizon Futures Watch quarterly newsletters;

iv) promoting broad public engagement with foresight for R&I policy, including stakeholders as well as the public and covering all sections of society, from scientists and engineers to policy-makers, artists, intellectuals and engaged citizens.

Client

Posted on: 30/10/2024

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MEGATRENDS 2050. THE CHANGING WORLD May 2023 - March 2025

Impacts in Portugal

The digital brochure "Megatrends 2050, Changing World: Impacts on Portugal - a Brief Introduction" is now available. This is a publication by the Planning and Foresight Services Network of the Public Administration (RePLAN), as part of the activities carried out by the Multisectoral Foresight Team. RePLAN is chaired by the Public Administration Planning, Policy and Foresight Competence Center (PlanAPP), in which the FCT participates.Duration of the study: The project was launched in June 2023 and will be concluded with the launch of the final report in April 2025.
The document, available on the PlanAPP website, is a brief introduction to the 2050 Megatrends Report for Portugal, to be published by the end of year 2024. It presents, in a brief and preliminary way, the nine megatrends that are likely to shape the future of our country, with a general description and a list of the most relevant potential impacts: Worsening climate change; Growing pressure on natural resources; Diversifying and changing economic models; Diverging demographic trends; A more urban world; A more digital world; Accelerating technological development; A multipolar world and New challenges to democracy.

The identification and description of megatrends for Portugal is a work in progress, based on a collaborative, systematic and open process. During this year, with the aim of producing a report and supporting the formulation of public policies, this process will be deepened with workshops, expert consultation and citizen participation. The list of partner institutions may still be extended until the end of the process and does not include the experts from academia and civil society who have been taking part in the workshops and interviews.
The list of partner institutions may still be extended until the end of the process and does not include the experts from academia and civil society who have been taking part in the workshops and interviews.

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Posted on: 30/10/2024

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Strategic Foresight for Sustainability June 2022 - May 2025

SF4S

SF4S is a collaborative action with partners from Higher Education institutions (HEIs), Vocational Education and Training (VET) providers, innovation networks and business entities from the Agri-food, Health and the Mobility sectors.

Carried out between July 2022 - June 2025, SF4S supports our transition to a more sustainable European economy by helping to address the lack of green, digital and future (i.e. sustainability foresight) skills among students and professionals and by connecting knowledge flows between HEI, VET and industry actors that are necessary for Europe to develop cooperative solutions on a large-scale and support the recommendations for action in the major reports and initiatives: Green Deal, NextGenerationEU, European Skills Agenda and OECD Future of Education and Skills 2030.

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Posted on: 30/10/2024

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MOVING

Mountain Valorization through Interconnectedness and Green Growth

European mountain areas play a central role in the well-being of many highly populated European regions. The big question is how these mountain areas are being impacted by climate change. 

The EU-funded MOVING project will build capacities and co-develop policy frameworks across Europe. It will establish new or upscaled value chains to boost resilience and sustainability of mountain areas. The first step will be to screen traditional and emerging value chains in all European mountain areas. The next step will involve in-depth assessment of vulnerability and resilience of land use, production systems and value chains in 23 mountain regions. The project will use a virtual research environment to promote online interactions amongst actors and new tools to ensure information is accessible by different audiences.

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Posted on: 30/10/2024

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TRIGGER November 2018 - April 2022

Trends in Global Governance and Europe's Role

The ultimate objectives of TRIGGER are to provide EU institutions with knowledge and tools to enhance their actorness, effectiveness and influence in global governance; and to develop new ways to harness the potential of public engagement and participatory foresight in complex governance decisions, thereby also tackling emerging trends such as nationalism, regionalism and protectionism.

TRIGGER specific objectives are:

  • Advance the state of the art in understanding global governance;
  • Evolution of the EU’s interaction with global governance, in particular so-called “actorness” and “effectiveness” of the EU;
  • Understand how global governance and emerging technologies interact, and what role the EU plays in this respect, in particular as “regulatory superpower”;
  • Identify emerging trends that strengthen / loosen deeper global governance and cooperation;
  • Build capacity for strategic foresight and public engagement inside EU institutions.

The TRIGGER consortium is composed of 14 partners, including four non-EU countries. TRIGGER will achieve its objectives thanks to the combined effort of four research sub-groups:

  • a group focused on global and EU governance, which will create an unprecedented Atlas of Global Governance REGulation and Europe’s AcTORness (AGGREGATOR);
  • a group focused on the relationship between governance and emerging technologies; 
  • a group dedicated to strategic foresight and public engagement, which will use new techniques such as AI-enabled sentiment analysis and innovative public engagement methods to develop a tool on Co-Creating the European Union (COCTEAU); and
  • a group specialised in dissemination and communication. All major deliverables will eventually be merged into a toolkit dedicated to Public Engagement for Responsive and Shared EU Strategies (PERSEUS).

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Posted on: 30/10/2024

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Earth4All

Earth4All is an international initiative to accelerate the systems-change we need for an equitable future on a finite planet. Our analysis combines the best available science with new economic thinking. We found that the next ten years must see the fastest economic transformation in history if we want to steer humanity away from social and ecological catastrophe. 

Earth4All started as a vibrant collective of leading economic thinkers, scientists, policy leaders, and advocates, convened by The Club of Rome, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Stockholm Resilience Centre and the Norwegian Business School.

Building on the legacies of The Limits to Growth and the Planetary Boundaries frameworks, science is at the heart of our work. Leading scientists have developed state of the art systems dynamic models and run different scenarios for possible plausible futures.

Earth4All is guided by a Transformational Economics Commission, made up of economic thinkers from across the globe to explore new economic thinking and test the model outcomes.

The third pillar is a global campaign that aims to make the Earth4All vision a reality, advocating for governments to adopt policies that will enable resilient and healthy societies.

We are providing a platform to connect and amplify the voices of people and organisations who want to upgrade our economies. The momentum is growing, with communities and policy makers around the world pushing for economic systems change.

Posted on: 30/10/2024

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S+T+Arts December 2023 - November 2026

Science, Technology and Arts

S+T+ARTS is an initiative of the European Commission, launched under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme to support collaborations between artists, scientists, engineers and researchers.

MISSION
Science, technology and arts (STARTS for short) limn a nexus at which insightful observers have identified extraordinarily high potential for innovation. And innovation is precisely what’s called for if we’re to master the social, ecological and economic challenges that Europe will be facing in the near future. With the S+T+ARTS initiative, the European Commission’s focus is on projects and people that have the potential to make meaningful contributions to this effort.

VISION
S+T+ARTS is driven by the conviction that science and technology combined with an artistic viewpoint also open valuable perspectives for research and business, through a holistic and human-centered approach.

STRATEGY
S+T+ARTS is sustained by the STARTS Pillars that represent all the dimensions STARTS works with. Different funded projects offer complementary opportunities and services.

Posted on: 30/10/2024

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4Growth project December 2023 - November 2026

Understanding the Market to Forecast Future Growth

4Growth will showcase the uptake of digital technologies and data through the “4Growth Visualisation Platform” that will combine powerful storytelling with advanced visualisations of the market.

This 3-year Horizon Europe project, funded by the European Commission, brings together 13 partners with the aim of understanding where, how and to what extent digital technologies and data are being adopted within the agricultural and forestry sectors. The project started in January 2024 and will end in December 2026.

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Technical Managers

Posted on: 30/10/2024

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OrganicTargets4EU August 2022 - January 2026

Transformation scenarios for boosting organic farming and aquaculture towards the Farm-to-fork targets

OrganicTargets4EU supports the Farm-to-Fork Strategy in achieving the targets of at least 25% of the EU's agricultural land under organic farming and a significant increase in organic aquaculture by 2030.

Activities

OrganicTargets4EU for reaching these targets and identifies key drivers and lock-ins affecting the development of organic agriculture and aquaculture in 29 countries (EU-27+CH+NO). 

Production and Market analysis of the identified scenarios to provide a picture of:

  • Where increases in organic farmland can be achieved
  • The socio-economic impacts of these increases at the level of primary production, value chains, and markets
  • The mechanisms that can drive demand for organic food 

Knowledge & Innovation actions to:

  • Identify opportunities to strengthen organic advisory services
  • Stimulate the exchange of scientific and practical knowledge
  • Increase and coordinate R&I investments in the organic sector 

Policy work facilitating a multi-actor policy dialogue to:

  • Assess the feasibility of the organic Farm-to-Fork targets
  • Supports the implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), EU Organic Regulation, Organic Action Plan
  • Provide short-term policy options (policy framework up to 2027) and policy recommendations in the next policy reform (from 2028 onwards).

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Posted on: 30/10/2024

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The Responsible Research and Innovation Living Lab December 2022 - March 2027

The Prospects of Institutionalizing the Values of Openness and Mutual Responsiveness in Science and Democracy

The establishment of responsible innovation requires four key institutional changes. First, innovation must be value-driven. Second, an ethics of co-responsibility among stakeholders must be implemented. Third, innovation should be made directional and manageable. Fourth, market failures need to be addressed to facilitate necessary transformative changes, especially with regard to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This research project will take into account the evolution of Living Labs and various specialized Living Labs (e.g., urban labs, social labs, and responsible Living Labs) to assess to what extent they address these institutional requirements. On this basis, the concept of a new dedicated Living Lab: a Responsible Research and Innovation Lab for Engineering Practices will be introduced. Subsequently this dedicated Living Lab will be operationalised on a theme from the engineering sciences. We will consider innovations stemming from digital tech for Health issues, additive manufacturing or other engineering pratices. We will deploy participatory foresight, to enable a form of anticipatory governance of emerging new innovations.

This dedicated ling lab is contextualised in a broader context of a deliberative democracy: Living Labs can be seen as spaces for Organisational Learning and Collective Experimentation:Living Labs: ‘real-life test and experimentation environments that foster co-creation and open innovation among the main actors of the Quadruple Helix Model, namely: Citizens, Governmental Organisations, Industrial organisations and Academia’ (ENoLL 2024)It operationalises an important feature of Responsible Research and Innovation: Making stakeholders co-responsible and mutually responsive to each other by engaging them in an open co-creation/ co-enquiry process. (among other on the basis of participatory foresight of emerging technologies and innovations)The idea of 'openess' and 'mutual reponsiveness' as values of actors and institutions will also be subject of analysis.Science and innovation can be better fostered in an open, democratic society than in other types of societies. The norm of civic participation in a ‘democracy’ is a lived ideal for citizens, just as the norm of ‘communalism’ is a lived ideal for the scientific community. Both norms presuppose the values of ‘openness’ and 'mutual responsiveness' among scientist and citizens.This highlights ‘openness’ not as a prescriptive norm but as a value of the institution of science. Simultaneously, ‘openness’ is also an institutional value of a democracy. However, science and democracy are dependent on the extent to which scientist and citizens engage on the basis of these norms. How can we best encourage and incentivise those?

Posted on: 28/10/2024

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Smart Futures Tunisia

Exploring the digital skills of tomorrow (a foresight journey into the year 2035)

Smart Futures Tunisia aims to explore what Tunisia and its digital economy could and should look like in 2035. For this purpose, normative future scenarios were created from which inspiring future job profiles could be derived. In a final step, recommendations identify options for action through which the envisioned future can be approximated.

The results are based on a three-stage methodology approach:

  • First, key thematic areas were outlined through baseline research and expert interviews.
  • Second, a foresight workshop was conducted to create a room to elaborate on different future scenarios and job profiles while also developing a digital skills map and initially discuss recommendations. 
  • Third, the results were refined through expert validation loops and expert interviews.

The future scenarios were created to explore what urban areas, smaller cities and rural areas might look like in 2035. A future is drawn in which Tunisia is characterized by smart and self-powered buildings, increasing e-mobility, and public services delivered digitally. Apart from that, digital progress offers the opportunity to provide more equitable education, to conduct various types of commercial activities via e-commerce, and to improve access to health. Such a future in its variety of facets has been visually depicted in the graphic above.


Furthermore, future job profiles are derived on this basis. In a desirable Tunisian development, these will be found primarily in the areas of food production, fintech, e-commerce, health tech, mobility, ed-, gov-, and green tech. Specific job profiles range from farm drone operators, who operate and maintain drones that monitor, measure and analyze crop growth and health, to cybersecurity experts, who protect government data from digital attacks. To be prepared for the changing profiles, digital competencies need to be developed, which can be categorized into the following four pillars: digital literacy and data literacy, technology-specific skills, digital product literacy, and digital transformation literacy.


After developing future scenarios and outlining future job profiles, recommendations were finally drawn up that will enable Tunisia to proactively strive for the future outlined. General recommendations manifest themselves, for example, in the promotion of a "digital culture" that includes all strata of the population in order to make appropriate use of the potential of digitization. A specific example of a topic area recommendation is to strive for leadership in green tech solutions. Here, it is recommended to promote green tech culture, for example by including environmental sustainability and green tech solutions in education and public campaigns. In addition to content recommendations, Foresight Journey recommendations aim to improve and deepen the methodological applications of foresight for potential future ventures in this thematic field.


Smart Futures Tunisia is part of the Special Initiative “Decent Work for a Just Transition” Invest for Jobs of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Digital Transformation Programme Tunisia of the Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. Invest for Jobs aims to team up with companies to create good jobs in eight African partner countries and to improve local working conditions.

Posted on: 28/10/2024

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i-Portunus Houses

Kick-Start a Local Mobility Host Network for Artists & Cultural Professionals in AllCreative Europe Countries

The i-Portunus Houses project, implemented on behalf of the European Commission by a consortium of three partners – the European Cultural Foundation (coordinator), MitOst, and Kultura Nova Foundation – was dedicated to testing and analysing diverse transnational mobility schemes for the cultural sector. Apart from granting support for local hosts from all Creative Europe countries for the mobility of artists and cultural professionals, the project also included research on mobility in culture and the design of policy recommendations.

In the research, the mobility of artists and cultural professionals is understood as the temporary, cross-border travel of artists and cultural professionals with the purpose of creating, connecting, exploring and learning. The research was carried out by experts from different disciplines with Dea Vidović being the research leader. As a result of the aforementioned research, in 2022 Kultura Nova Foundation published a 4-volume publication. Each volume represents one of the research sections: 

(1) conceptual framework of mobility in culture; 

(2) the study on mobility in culture from the perspectives of artists, cultural professionals, hosts and funders; 

(3) an evaluation of i-Portunus Houses mobility grant scheme and 

(4) scenario for the future of mobility in culture.  

The research covers a wide range of topics related to mobility in culture, such as its participatory and networking dimension, its digital dimension and virtual mobility, as well as its green dimension. The culmination of the research, alongside extensive recommendations and action points for sustainable mobility, is Scenario for the Future which introduces a new concept of "slow mobility".

https://culturalfoundation.eu/programmes/i-portunus-houses/ 

https://kulturanova.hr/eng/rampd/projects/i-portunus-houses

Coordinator

Posted on: 28/10/2024

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FEDORA August 2020 - July 2023

Responsibility and Engagement in the society of acceleration and uncertainty.

Regenerating the ecosystem of science learning by developing a future-oriented model to enable creative thinking, foresight and active hope as skills needed in formal and informal science education.

FEDORA was a 3-year EU-funded project, which started in September 2020 and deployed its activities until August 2023. It gathered 6 partner institutions from 5 European countries. It conducted reasearch and practice towards the regeneration of the ecosystem of science learning, by developing a future-oriented model to enable creative thinking, foresight and active hope, as skills needed in formal and informal science education.

https://www.fedora-project.eu/

Coordinator

Posted on: 28/10/2024

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EUARENAS December 2020 - September 2024

Democracy across Europe has experienced immense challenge, change and uncertainty in recent years (Canal 2014; European Commission & Merkel; 2019) - from the rise of populism to decreasing levels of public trust in governance institutions and processes, to the war in Ukraine. Set against the backdrop of these issues, EUARENAS has been investigating how cities and urban spaces can strengthen legitimacy, identification and engagement within the democratic public sphere. Specifically, EUARENAS has been exploring how participation and deliberation in democracy and decision-making can be increased, and how voices and communities who are excluded from such arenas can be more actively involved.

Foresight is one of the research strands present in EUARENAS. In this project, foresight is both a tool for understanding democratic innovations as they emerge, and for engaging citizens and other actors in such innovations within the participatory and deliberative realms. Mixed method approaches to foresight that incorporate a diversity of activities such as media discourse analysis, lived experience storytelling, social media analysis, three horizons mapping, driver-mapping, scenario and visioning exercises and policy stress- testing have been used in EUARENAS to investigate and hypothesise over future trends and scenarios in participatory democracies. 

From this work, we propose the following recommendations for Cities wanting to strive towards more equitable local democracies:

  1. Address structural barriers to participation
  2. Build relationships of trust
  3. Invest in formal and civic education
  4. Make decisions for the long-term

A more equitable, inclusive local democracy landscape is not too far in the distance for us to conceive it being possible. In fact, the future is now – the seeds to create it are already being planted, they just need nurturing by:

  • Scaling and mainstreaming existing pilot or niche practices that are working locally – whether that beparticipatory budgeting, citizen assemblies or other smaller-scale projects – so that these become thenew ‘status quo’
  • Adopting test and learn approaches to promote experimentation and on-going learning – this will enableongoing innovation and be responsive to society's needs
  • Finding ways to celebrate and connect-up the small changes that are taking place - this will help people see that progress is being made, even when it feels like things are changing too slow

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Posted on: 26/10/2024

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Foresight for Social Innovation December 2022 - March 2023

We implemented the ForSI (Foresight for Social Innovation) project with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, with the Unit of Social Innovation. The aim of this collaboration was to identify so-called social time bombs - in our definition, problems that will be significant in the future or are already known today, but not yet sufficiently addressed by the state administration. 

The learning process itself was also a framing goal of this collaboration, where the unit team wanted to learn some foresight methods and implement them into certain processes of the department's work. The project involved desk research, two expert workshops, expert interviews, and also working closely with leading experts on social issues to develop a set of social issue cards. The final list of social time bombs was used by the unit to define calls for grant programs for nonprofits seeking to address diverse problems through social innovation. Foresight was thus used in this case to direct public funds more effectively, thereby addressing the problems that need to be focused on with an eye to the future.

https://www.ceskepriority.cz/foresight#co_je_foresight

Posted on: 26/10/2024

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Actualization of Czech republic 2030 strategy

The aim of this study was to serve as one of the inputs to the update and to initiate a discussion on the possibilities of updating the Czech republic 2030 strategy. In order to ensure that this strategic document reflects the dynamic developments on the global and domestic scene, mechanisms for regular reviews and updates of the objectives and measures have been proposed. Given the events of the last 3 years (especially the Covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine), it is relevant to review the relevance of the assumptions regarding the long-term development of the Czech Republic, which served as the basis for the original wording of the strategic objectives and targeting of the document.
The role of České priority was to provide foresight exercises in order to reach two goals:

  • Assess the relevance of existing goals: the problems and challenges facing society are changing and so are the definition of objectives for further development. The task of this section is therefore also to determine whether the original ČR 2030 goals are still relevant in the context of change and respond to the major challenges that society is facing and will continue to face in the coming decades.
  • Identify blind spots: there may be issues or opportunities that the document does not cover - i.e. blind spots. The next task of this part of the update is to identify such gaps to increase the comprehensiveness of the document.

The project was implemented in the form of workshops, which were attended by experts and representatives of public institutions and ministries. On the basis of pre-prepared scenarios of development, the participants had to identify the resulting challenges, opportunities and areas that have not yet been covered in the CR 2030. The list of these areas was subsequently consulted with representatives of public institutions. These expert consultations were complemented by input from the general public through a creative competition held in September 2022.

https://www.ceskepriority.cz/foresight#co_je_foresight 

Posted on: 26/10/2024

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Time Capsule


Creating a time capsule is a form of time travel. Imagine a future where the world is blooming and blossoming, what does it look like, feel like, smell like, sound like? This time-capsule project is curated by Lilian de Jong. 

Posted on: 24/10/2024

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Foresight for Intergenerational Decision-Making

Empowering Youth to Shape the Future

Imagine a world where young people are not just the leaders of tomorrow, but the co-creators of today.

That's the vision behind the Foresight for Intergenerational Decision-Making initiative, a brainchild of the Big Brainstorm project run by the Unlock the Future coalition, under the umbrella of the UN Foundation. The Big Brainstorm is like a global talent show on ideas. Young innovators from every corner of the world come together to brainstorm, design, and launch initiatives to tackle some of the biggest challenges humanity faces. This year, over 2,000 young minds have joined the Big Brainstorm, with nearly half of them proposing initiatives to speed up action towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

Out of these, twenty initiatives were selected, and one of them is the Foresight for Intergenerational Decision-Making. The heart of this initiative is a toolkit designed to run multi-stakeholder Foresight exercises. Think of it as a DIY kit for the future, helping young people to build meaningful spaces where they can engage with adults, particularly decision-makers and the private sector, to co-create their vision for the future. The initiative is based on the belief that young people have innovative ideas and stories that can help shape the future. By using Foresight tools, they can engage in a process of co-creation, sharing their perspectives and visions for the future with decision-makers, and learning to anticipate both the opportunities and threats behind different scenarios. 

This summer, the toolkit will be put to the test different locations. It's like a world tour for the future, with young leaders from the United Nations Foundation’s Big Brainstorm leading the charge. The toolkit is being designed with the help of Foresight practitioners who have hands-on experience in intergenerational spaces and field experience in the Majority World. 

Currently, the forward thinkers behind the initiative have launched a global survey and conduct interviews to understand the fears and hopes of young people. 

Want to get involved ? You can complete the survey here and have the chance to connect with us at the end of the survey!

The Foresight for Intergenerational Decision-Making initiative is a big step towards a future-focused approach. It aims to provide young people with a toolkit for creating meaningful intergenerational spaces, create a platform for adolescents, young people, and Foresight practitioners to brainstorm together, and showcase examples of good practice that can be replicated across the world. The initiative is open to all young people and their allies who are willing to contribute to its goals and offer fresh insights. Any youth networks interested in leading the organization of piloting experiences are encouraged to get in touch with the Action Group.

In a nutshell, the Foresight for Intergenerational Decision-Making initiative is all about empowering young people to shape their futures. By giving them the tools and platforms to engage with decision-makers and the private sector, the initiative is nurturing a new generation of changemakers who are ready to tackle the world's most pressing challenges. The future is in our hands, and with the help of this initiative, young people are being given the tools to shape it. 

So, let's roll up our sleeves and get ready to shape the future together!

Contact the coordination team: felibosch3@gmail.com / chalalidaouia@hotmail.fr / salifi.alimou@gmail.com / Claudette.salinas10@gmail.com 

The future generations movement has been growing for almost thirty years and was given a new lease of life after the 2021 report Our Common Agenda. The UN Secretary General has called for a multilateral system that incorporates long-term thinking. This has sparked a momentum in the United Nations, leading to plans for a Summit of the Future in 2024, a Declaration on Future Generations, and a recommendation to appoint a Special Envoy for Future Generations.

Posted on: 24/10/2024

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FORPOL September 2022 - February 2023

From October 2022 to March 2023, we ran a forecasting tournament with a total of 54 questions. Almost all of our forecasting questions were developed in cooperation with 16 different public institutions and ministerial departments. Each institution or department defined its most useful forecasting topics, participated in a workshop to define specific questions with us, and was later provided with the results. This was intended as a proof of concept of one possible approach to incorporating forecasting in public decision-making.


Once defined, our forecasting questions were then posted on a private Metaculus sub-domain (in Czech), where an average of 72 forecasters had the opportunity to address them as they would any other question on Metaculus (median of 18 predictions per user). Throughout the tournament, we produced 16 reports detailing the rationales and forecasts, to be used by the cooperating institutions.
A handful of our partners have already reported acting on the information/judgment presented in our reports. This has concerned, for example, the national foreclosure issue (some 6% of the total population have debts in arrears) where the debt relief process is being redesigned midst strong lobbying and insufficient personal capacities; or the probabilities of outlier scenarios for European macroeconomic development, which was requested by the Slovak Ministry of Finance to help calibrate their existing judgements.


It also seems useful to explore various approaches to grow the number of policymakers with personal experience and skills in forecasting. In our case, we found curiosity and willingness to try forecasting even in unexpected institutional locations (i.e. the Czech R&I funding body). This makes us more confident that the “external forecasts” approach (as compared to building internal prediction tournaments or focusing on advancing forecasting skills of public servants) is worth investigating further precisely because it allows us to detect and draw on this interest irrespective of institutional and seniority distinctions and resource constraints.
While we hope that any readers with an interest in forecasting may find our experience useful, we expect that both this and any future projects of ours make it easier for other teams to work towards similar goals. To that effect, the write-up also contains an Annex of “Methodological Guidelines,” where we outline in more explicit terms the questions and decisions that we found were important to tackle when running the project, and what they may entail.

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Posted on: 23/10/2024

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ESPAS Horizon Scanning

The ongoing inter-institutional European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS) Horizon Scanning activity is led since 2022 by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission and the European Parliamentary Research Services. An iterative methodology is rolled out at three successive levels, involving experts in a variety of policy areas and across several EU institutions.


Firstly, at the outset, this exercise builds a wider EU community engaged in horizon scanning. Their task at a first level has involved looking for future developments that sit at the margins of current thinking and planning, the so-called ‘signs of new’.


Secondly, sense-making workshops are organised on a monthly basis to consider through new lenses the identified ‘signs of new’ collected over the month and find links and interconnections among them across policies and sectors. The aim of these second-level workshops is thus to imagine possible impactful future developments, ‘signals of change’, using the collected signs as prompts.

Thirdly, future impact workshops, conceived as exploratory and prioritisation workshops are organised after conducting a few sense-making workshops. These workshops also include the participation of officials across all ESPAS institutions and aim to prioritise the three potentially most impactful ‘signals of change’ from among those identified at an earlier stage.
This careful process results in Horizon Scanning newsletters providing a broader perspective on policy making.

Read the latest newsletters here: Horizon Scanning | ESPAS

See also blog post describing the project and its role in EU : Spotting the Future: How Horizon Scanning can help shape EU Policy - European Commission (europa.eu) 

ESPAS Horizon Scanning feeds to other ESPAS projects. Read the Global Trends Reports published every five years.

Partners:

European Strategy and Policy Analysis System (ESPAS)
Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (JRC)
European Parliamentary Research Services (EPRS)

Posted on: 22/10/2024

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Digital Transition

Long-Term Implications of the Digital Transition for Farmers and Rural Communities

Project

Successfully managing the green and digital transitions is a crucial factor that could increase the resilience and strategic autonomy of the EU and shape its future. Yet the digitalisation of agriculture and rural areas raises vital questions about winners and losers, costs, benefits, and long-term implications. 

European Commission’s foresight project coordinated by EU Policy Lab together with the Department for Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI) in 2023-2024 explored the interplay between digital transition, policies and the resilience of the agricultural sector and rural areas, against the backdrop of potential disruptive and transformative changes. 

The digital transition will occur in a rapidly changing world faced with climate change, environmental degradation, geopolitical instability, shifting supply networks, and evolving consumer demand. This study's foresight scenarios suggest that digitalisation can catalyse transformation, aiding in coping with shocks, knowledge acquisition, community building, and system-related thinking. But at the same time, it can also reinforce inequalities and introduce rigidities. Therefore, digitalisation support should aim to create sustainable food systems and robust, connected, and prosperous rural areas and communities. 

A sound digital transition strategy should promote agricultural and rural resilience, green transition, digital citizenship for farmers and communities, and overall well-being. Digitalisation should uphold values like trust, equality, power, sovereignty, and care. Its execution should prioritise collaboration, accessibility, people-centric design, and circularity. Key enablers for a successful digital transition include capacity building for digital skills, fostering a robust digital ecosystem, investing in infrastructure and connectivity, and securing sufficient funding. 

Read the blog post to learn more about the project.

Science for Policy Report

Based on a participatory foresight process, the Digital transition: Long-term implications for EU farmers and rural communities - report presents the outcomes of this exploration, proposing building blocks for an effective EU digital transition strategy for agriculture and rural areas supported by a hands-on policymaker’s toolkit.

Toolkit

The toolkit can help decision makers engage in strategic conversations about the implications of digital transition for farmers and rural communities. The tookit includes questions and activities to inform a digital strategy for agriculture and rural areas.The toolkit can help to:
Uncover key issues to reflect on when building a digitalisation vision and strategy.
Engage stakeholders to develop or improve the existing digital strategy.
Increase your anticipatory capacity and future-proof your digital transition strategy.
Learn more and download the toolkit.  

Interactive Vision Framework

The vision framework outlines the key elements that can support the digital transition of agriculture and rural areas.What is the purpose of digital transition from the perspectives of farmers and rural communities? Which values and principles should guide it? What are the enablers for the adoption and use of digital technologies? Explore the interactive Vision Framework 

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Posted on: 22/10/2024

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ReSChape September 2022 - August 2025

Reshaping Supply Chains for a Positive Social Impact


As a result of the recent pandemic, global value chains have completely transformed. This has raised concerns over the ensuing social, economic and environmental trends and related impact on the way supply chains are organised. In this context, the EU-funded ReSChape project will analyse social, economic and environmental changes and disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and evaluate their impact on supply chains. New supply chain models will be proposed, aiming towards a more streamlined supply chain process to assure humans (workers, consumers and in general citizens) to be at the center of the business also thanks to new digital technologies. It will be studied how to assure a positive social impact and innovative policy scenarios will be developed with recommendations to support the future supply chains.

The aims of this proposal are:
• To analyse social, economic and environmental changes and disruptions (including covid) and evaluate their impact on SCs, identifying related challenges in terms of relationship between countries, configuration of the network, impact on employment.


• To study and propose a set of SC models for the evolution of global SC integrating strategies like resource efficient, closed-loop and humanitarian as a way to increase EU resilience and sustainability. Particular attention will be given to the role of digitalization as a way to establish new paths for social inclusion taking into consideration the needs of urban and rural areas. Some important European sectors like fashion, automotive, medical and machine tools will be analysed with case studies and survey.


• To develop Innovative tools for monitoring and assessing sectoral trade patterns and defining mechanisms to evaluate relationship of disruptions like pandemic and global value chains taking into consideration impact on employment, economic growth, incomes etc also in the long term. Moreover, it will be analysed the impact of different trade patterns, on the EU value added of sectoral and countries with a specific focus on analyzing income inequalities and proposition of decent work and social cohesion. Particular attention will be gives to gender issues and social disparities.


• To develop innovative policy scenarios with recommendations for future global value chains: policy scenarios will be based on Key horizontal issues impacting on several sectors and will provide recommendations for EU, national and sectoral strategies, policy measures and targeted actions aimed at shaping fair, inclusive and sustainable trade patterns, value and supply chains as well as production networks.

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Posted on: 22/10/2024

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ANTICIPINNOV December 2021 - November 2024

Anticipation and monitoring of emerging technologies and disruptive innovation

Anticipatin and monitoring of emerging technologies and disruptive innovation (ANTICIPINNOV) project is a collaboration between the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) with the European Innovation Council (EIC) 2023-2024 to strengthen strategic intelligence capacity through the use and development of anticipatory approaches. Learn more about the project from its's three different branches. 

Everybody is looking into the Future! A literature review of reports on emerging technologies and disruptive innovation

Growing volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, present leading challenges in policy-making nowadays. Anticipatory thinking and foresight are of utmost importance to help explore trends, risks, emerging issues, and their potential implications and opportunities in order to draw useful insights for strategic planning, policy-making and preparedness. The findings include a set of 106 signals and trends on emerging technologies and disruptive innovations across several areas of application based on a review of key reports on technology and innovation trends and signals produced by public and private entities outside of the EU institutions. Its goal is to strengthen the EIC’s strategic intelligence capacity through the use and development of anticipatory approaches that will - among other goals – support innovation funding prioritisation. Other insights were extracted, namely those related with the scope of the EIC Programme Manager portfolios. 

Read EU Policy Lab blog post :Everybody is looking into the future: a technology foresight perspective 

Scanning deep tech horizons: Participatory collection and assessment of signals and trends

The Joint Research Centre (JRC) and the European Innovation Council (EIC) conducted a series of Horizon Scanning exercises across six EIC programme managers’ (PM) portfolios as part of an ongoing collaborative effort to strengthen EIC strategic intelligence capacity through the use and development of anticipatory approaches. The fields covered include: Space Systems & Technologies; Quantum Technologies; Agriculture & Food; Solar Fuels & Chemicals; Responsible Electronics and Architecture, Engineering & Construction. The main findings of this Horizon Scanning – the identification and analysis of ‘signals’ from nascent research, technologies, or trends on the periphery of the mainstream – show opportunities for investment in emerging technologies and breakthrough innovations that can advance EU competitiveness while also serving to support the EU’s long-term policy and societal visions.Other insights were taken from this exercise, namely the identification of drivers, enablers and barriers to technology development and adoption, that could be the starting ground of further foresight exercises and policy initiatives. The report highlights three main themes – sustainability, energy, and scalability, which are overarching across signals, drivers, enablers and barriers. And concludes with a series of recommendations to streamline Horizon Scanning activities in the specific context and needs of the EIC. 

Read EU Policy Lab blog post: Technology foresight: anticipating the innovations of tomorrow 

Technology Foresight for Public Funding of Innovation: Methods and Best Practices

 In times of growing uncertainties and complexities, anticipatory thinking is essential for policymakers. Technology foresight explores the longer-term futures of Science, Technology and Innovation. It can be used as a tool to create effective policy responses, including in technology and innovation policies, and to shape technological change. In this report we present six anticipatory and technology foresight methods that can contribute to anticipatory intelligence in terms of public funding of innovation: the Delphi survey, genius forecasting, technology roadmapping, large language models used in foresight, horizon scanning and scenario planning. Each chapter provides a brief overview of the method with case studies and recommendations.The insights from this report show that only by combining different anticipatory viewpoints and approaches to spotting, understanding and shaping emergent technologies, can public funders such as the European Innovation Council improve their proactive approaches to supporting ground-breaking technologies. In this way, they will help innovation ecosystems to develop. 

Posted on: 22/10/2024

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Futures Garden February 2023 - November 2023

Futures Garden: Pioneering Policy Innovation through Speculative Design

At Futures Garden, we embark on a visionary journey to redefine policy-making for Europe's future. Our unique platform collaborates with leading futurists, innovative designers, and engaged EU citizens to envision a Europe enriched by diverse potential futures, each with its own opportunities and challenges. Our mission? To revolutionize policy creation by intertwining speculative design with creativity, empathy, and analytical insight. Our four-step approach ensures a comprehensive and impactful exploration:

  • Horizon Scanning: We dive into cutting-edge ideas and emerging trends, identifying opportunities that could shape Europe's future.
  • Speculative Design: Our creative process transforms abstract concepts into tangible, thought-provoking scenarios, making future possibilities more accessible and engaging.
  • Citizen Engagement: We delve into the societal implications of these speculative scenarios, gathering diverse perspectives and insights from EU citizens.
  • Policy Reflection: The final step involves analyzing the potential impact of these innovative ideas on policy-making, ensuring that future EU policies are forward-thinking, inclusive, and impactful.

Creating fictional artifacts through speculative design

Futures Garden aims at creating inspiring alternative future scenarios through the use of fictional future artifacts that invite to reflection and debate. The pilot project took place in 2023 and addressed two themes:

  • “Dealing with future selves” explores new ways of being, individually and collectively, examines new practices and technologies that enhance self-reflection and sharing of emotions, which help shape our choices in life and nurture a renewed sense of togetherness.
  • “Extending human perception to new scales” explores the richness of non-human intelligences, expanding our attention and appreciation for their unique sensory worlds, their “umwelt” – what they “feel” and how they “think”. In doing so it departs from the human-centric worldview towards a deeper understanding and celebration of life on Earth.

The resulting fictional artifacts took the form of short, thought-provoking movies – Inwards and Symbiotic – which render the imagined future scenarios more tangible, immersive and engaging.  

Watch "Inwards" - The 2050s a re a time of deep social reconfiguration. No longer believing in the myth of perpetual economic growth, recipes for self-empowerment, and technological fixes, citizens of Europe seek to regain agency by turning inwards.
New cultures of emotional excellence and material minimalism emerge, supported by tools for assisted introspection and emotion sharing. In the wake of this quiet revolution, the social contract progressively integrates a renewed sense of togetherness.

Watch "Symbiotic" - Set in the Symbiocene era of the 2050s, a time marked by an expanded understanding of intelligence beyond human confines, Symbiotic explores a revolutionary breakthrough. Scientists have created a device that allows humans to experience the perceptions and sensory worlds of other intelligent beings, immersing them in the 'umwelt' of these creatures. This film documents the first groundbreaking experiences through the device, capturing the profound experiences of those who ventured into these new realms of intelligence.

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Lead of pilot project

Posted on: 21/10/2024

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Foresight towards the 2nd Strategic Plan for Horizon Europe June 2021 - May 2023

This foresight study aimed at supporting the development of the Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe (2025-2027), by providing early-stage strategic intelligence and sense-making that could contribute novel elements to the processes of strategic planning.

The study, which was launched in mid-2021 and lasted almost two years, has been the most widely engaging foresight exercise yet aiming to support EU R&I policy. Through this broad engagement, the study did not only develop intelligence for the 2nd Strategic Plan of Horizon Europe but also contributed to the development of an EU R&I foresight community hosted by futures4europe.eu, one that is an asset for future R&I policies across Europe.

The foresight process in support of the 2nd Strategic Plan comprised a wide spectrum of activities:

  • As a reference point for the exploratory work, the explicit and implicit impact assumptions of the 1st Strategic Plan were identified and visualised with the help of a qualitative system analysis and modelling tool for causal loop analysis.

  • An exploratory analysis of forward-looking sources (e.g. foresight reports, web-based horizon scanning) was conducted to identify relevant trends and signals of unexpected developments. These were discussed in online workshops and on the online platform futures4europe.eu.

  • An outlook on emerging developments in the global and European context of EU R&I policy was developed drawing on a major online workshop in autumn 2021 with some 60 participants, experts and policy makers, who worked with multi-level context scenarios and specific context narratives about emerging disruptions.

  • On that basis and in close consultation with the European Commission involving another major workshop in February 2022 which brought together 80 participants, Expert Teams were set up to develop disruptive scenarios in five areas of major interest. Each team ran several internal workshops but also involved further experts and Commission staff in their work, both through the online platform and through a final policy-oriented workshop. The foresight work within the five areas of interest resulted in deep dives on the following topics:
    > Climate change, Research, and Innovation: Radical Options from Social Change to Geoengineering
    > Hydrogen Economy – A radical alternative
    > The EU in a Volatile New World - The challenge of global leadership
    > Global Commons
    > Transhumanist Revolutions

  • Further areas of interest identified were explored through review papers aiming to capture major trends, developments and scenario sketches in relation to further disruptive developments:
    > Social Confrontations
    > Artificial General Intelligence: Issues and Opportunities
    > The Interpenetration of Criminal and Lawful Economic Activities
    > The Future of Health

  • A third major workshop took place in October 2022 bringing together all the thematic strands of work and addressing possible R&I policy implications from this work. Participation in this workshop reached 250 individuals over 2 days.

  • Building on the workshop, the online Dynamic Argumentative Delphi survey Research4Futures collected suggestions from almost 950 contributors from Europe and beyond about the implications of this foresight work for the priorities of EU R&I policy.

The detailed description of the foresight work and the resulting outputs are available in the final report of the project. 

This foresight study has been implemented through the Foresight on Demand framework contract, by a team of 40 experts. About 300 additional experts contributed to the project through its numerous workshops that helped shape the scenarios and their policy implications. 

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Posted on: 21/10/2024

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Last Edited: 18 days ago

Reimagining the Food System June 2021 - November 2021

Scanning the horizon for emerging social innovations

Food systems require urgent and profound transformation to become sustainable, both in Europe and worldwide. Social innovation plays a pivotal role in transforming today’s food systems into ones that are economically and socially feasible, and sustainable within planetary boundaries.

The project Reimagining the Food System: scanning the horizon for emerging social innovations was conducted by the Foresight on Demand consortium between July - December 2021, on behalf of the European Environment Agency. It engaged in a systemic examination of emerging social innovations across the food chain, conducted using horizon scanning, a tool to detect early signs of potentially important developments. Thus, it offers insights into the experimentation taking place in alternative ways to produce, trade and consume food.

Project phases:

  • The horizon-scanning combined web mining with a filtering and validation process, using machine learning and human evaluation. The exercise identified over 240 weak (or early) signals from a variety of news articles, blogs and grey literature published in English between 2017 and 2021. The signals were aggregated into 24 closely related subsets, with each cluster hinting at a potential emerging issue (see image below);
  • Next, 21 representatives from civil society organisations, business, academia and government discussed these issues at a sense-making workshop in September 2021;
  • Following the workshop, 10 emerging issues were prioritised for characterisation. The characterisation was based on desk research and 11 semi-structured interviews with experts in the field. The 10 selected emerging issues include developments in new foods, products, services, and business and governance models. These issues have often been enabled by existing technologies and new forms of local partnerships, involving a variety of engaged stakeholders. They vary in their degree of maturity and novelty: some are relatively new developments, while others lend new perspectives to known subjects. Moreover, some provide new combinations of existing elements, while others are niche practices beginning to filter into the mainstream:

    1. Agroecology: a way of producing food and living, a science and a movement for change
    2. Soulful soil: alternative methods for nutrient and pest management
    3. The power of many: community-supported agriculture networks and initiatives
    4. Food-growing cities: urban farming, integrated food policies and citizen involvement
    5. Muscle-up: alternative protein sources for human consumption
    6. Knowledge is power: ensuring traceability and informing consumers
    7. Reclaiming retail: (re)connecting farmers with consumers and businesses
    8. Procurement strategies supporting sustainable agricultural and fishing practices
    9. Menu for change: restaurants feed appetite for sustainability
    10. The gift that keeps on giving: upcycled foods and food into energy

Read the European Environment Agency's briefing building on key findings of the project: Reimagining the food system through social innovations — European Environment Agency (europa.eu) 

Project lead
Client

Posted on: 19/10/2024