The Handbook of Technology Foresight: Concepts and Practice

Citation

Forge, S. (2008), "The Handbook of Technology Foresight: Concepts and Practice", Foresight, Vol. 10 No. 5, pp. 65-66. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680810918522

This is a book that the policymaker will want to read, in order to understand what benefits foresight exercises could bring. It shows what could be the return on investment of time, resources and money in terms of insights, perhaps even wisdom, which may be gathered from such exercises. The book consists of a collection of papers from an international range of researchers[1], edited by a team largely from PREST[2] at the University of Manchester. Its three sections examine just what is technology foresight, the global experience of its use and the policy and management issues engendered.

It is nearly all here for us to peruse, learn – and marvel at – with an exhausting list of subjects being arrayed. We could begin with interviewing and acting, then go from morphological analysis to environmental scanning to technology intelligence scouting, from Delphi sector panels to multi‐criteria analysis. For a more global view, a history of foresight exercises have been gathered from all over the world – from Japan to Norway, and Brazil to France – investigated at length, with a useful depth. In all we have a breathtaking 400 pages of the techniques and experience of using technology foresight in practical situations.

We find some of the history of foresight, with Herman Kahn and the Foresight Diamond, with examples of studies, for instance on the industrialization of Asia, as well as techniques – roadmapping, backcasting, visioning, weak signals and relevance trees. Overall, this is a book simply packed with advice and the basic knowledge for practical technology foresight, which over the past six decades has grown into the key tool it is today for understanding future policy environments, impacts and subsequent government directions. Such tools have been used in various major exercises by governments, through teams of forecasting researchers, to plan complete industrial and social revolutions.

Countries such as South Korea, Japan and more recently China, are strong examples of how such analysis can be used constructively when applied to shape economic planning through an understanding of potential technological changes with their related economic and social affects. Europe has also put it to use, but perhaps in a more passive, or “future observing” fashion as one input for policy. The most interesting fact to come out of this study is perhaps is that in some cases technology foresight works quite well, when at the outset the cynical might say that nothing concrete can come from such an apparently academic exercise, seemingly many times removed from reality. Most interesting are the cases of rejection of the whole technique. This is sometimes the case in the US, as examined here – and the impacts of that rejection.

Foresight comes in different forms, with different aims and has had several generations of development, many explored here. These go back to the post‐war ideas of the 1940s, with early examples like Le Plan of Jean Monnet and others, perhaps a reaction to a military and economic defeat by technology. Thus it came to be seen as a useful tool to evaluate policy options, necessary to complement social and economic planning. Essentially we see the cultural dilemma for the USA here, in that centrally co‐ordinated planning long term, which is in some ways what foresight exercises are all about, is effectively excluded from the political dialogue except in one sphere – military planning and more specifically scenarios for conflict situations and mutual usages of the heaviest weapons – the side that the Herman Kahn based many studies on. The future of technology foresight in the US appears to be dim in that it runs against the reality that any form of long‐term national level planning is rarely on the political agenda. However it is of intense interest in the US to parts of the academic community, which considers foresight as an interesting and valid academic subject.

Essentially this highlights the policy dilemma as being cultural. Foresight as a useful public policy tool implies some form of central co‐ordination, however weak, if its conclusions are to be put to work. So that in an environment of short‐term goals and diversity of choice which is also overwhelmingly reactive, then implementation is unlikely. Its usefulness tends to become purely academic. However, that said, technology foresight is a living technique in all the OECD economies in a further context less considered here – that of commercial competition. Most companies today, including the US corporates, are keen to perform such exercises for specific markets, products and social conditions – and moreover will readily go from planning to ’execution’. Whether this matches the goals and issues of public policy planning is open to question.

Notes

Contributors include: W.B. Ashton, R. Barré, J. Cassingena Harper, P. Crehan, K. Cuhls, A. Eerola, L. Georghiou, A. Havas, B. Holst Jørgensen, R. Johnston, M. Keenan, T. Kuwahara, J. Medina, I. Miles, R. Popper, A. Porter, C. Sripaipan

Now Manchester Institute of Innovation Research.