PREST Foresight Course – Spring 2002

Citation

Popper Villarroel, R.A. (2002), "PREST Foresight Course – Spring 2002", Foresight, Vol. 4 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2002.27304fac.001

PREST Foresight Course – Spring 2002

Rafael Antonio Popper Villarroel

In some countries, a rainy Sunday is considered an excellent day to be with the family in a cosy environment and in relevance. This may have influenced the evolution of the foresight training course which began on May 26, 2002 in Manchester. Sunday evening's cocktail at Chancellors may have been used by PREST as a tool for social networking. The cocktail was followed by a buffet-dinner in eight-seat square tables, providing a comfortable and ideal atmosphere for further integration of self-established groups sharing similar interests. Learning about foresight was probably the strongest link between the 17 participants from 12 different countries. The five-day intense foresight training course covered a large number of issues that any sponsor, organizer and practitioner would deal with while initiating, budding and assessing a foresight study.

Foresight programmes have become an influential component within the national decision- and policy-making bodies of many countries. In the last seven years, foresight has grown to be an essential strategic tool for public, private and academic sectors in order to identify critical issues related to long-term economic and technological changes. Under this framework, foresight has been defined as a policy instrument and not a panacea for all national problems.

During the first day of the course lectures were mainly oriented towards what is, what does, what involves foresight. Foresight was presented as a systematic process in which intuition, scientific methods, expectations and sensitivity concerning trends, get combined to create visions of the future in social, technological, economic, ecological, politics, and values and norms (STEEPV) fields.

Within the broad interactive discussions and lectures of the first module "Foresight studies: an overview of the purpose and practice" there was a strong emphasis on the participation processes. Both lecturers and participants have accepted co-nomination methods for identification of experts and the use of widespread consultations as key accelerators of a foresight study.

Widespread participation has also helped the evolution of the so-called "third generation" of foresight studies, characterised by the following factors: continued increase in social-oriented research; enlarged research corporations (academics, industry, government and social stakeholders); growth in the importance of more thematic-oriented research as opposed to sector-oriented; increased socio-economic research; shifting towards problem-solving research and the spreading out of the foresight culture, manifested in higher status research.

Conclusions regarding the first day of the training course included considerations and practical exercises on steps for configuring a foresight study such as defining rationales, objectives and the programme level. Particular stress was made on the four basic resources for a foresight study which were noted as follows:

1. 1.

   high level of commitment;

2. 2.

   wide participation;

3. 3.

   deep interaction; and

4. 4.

   long-term view of benefits.

On Tuesday, the second module "Organizing a foresight study" began with a lecture focusing on concrete points to consider while "scoping" foresight: rationales, objectives, orientation, level, existing arrangements, time horizon, coverage, participation, consultation, duration and cost, methods, organization and management, outputs, intervention and outcomes. Building momentum and sponsorship issues were reinforced with a second practical exercise.

Further discussions dealt with the importance of innovations in communication/participation processes highlighting the increased use of online foresight methods and tools. Regarding the methods, interesting debates regarding the use of quantitative and qualitative techniques provided participants with some examples of how to combine methods of science with subjective knowledge.

In addition, there was a presentation discussing how a narrow (i.e. family-business) decision-making process transformed into a widespread (i.e. clusters) business dynamics-oriented foresight study. This presentation offered an overview of the use of foresight in the private sector.

Conclusions of the second module involved general lectures on the importance of modelling, creativity and marriage with other disciplines (i.e. geographic information science/systems). A special case study was presented to illustrate how trans-disciplinary orientation could increase scientific and public awareness.

The third module "Operational issues, procedures and details" covered an imperative issue in its first lecture about the tasks and responsibilities of each player (champions, those in charge, steering committee, secretariat, panels, experts, intermediaries and other organizations) within a foresight study.

Results of the practical exercise on methods and resources were preceded by a quick review of qualitative methods, such as brainstorming, and of Delphi and scenario writing. Exercises indicated a large interest regarding the use of regular combinations of methods.

A well-planned learning process normally takes into account that memory and understanding do not work in exactly the same way as time progresses. In order to maintain a high recall level, resting the mind is highly recommended to make sure that the understood information stays in the participant's memory. For this reason, Wednesday's lectures finished in the early afternoon with a presentation on sustainable development. This presentation showed how environmental-friendly long-term strategies have been implemented within the business sector.

Later in the day, there was a guided visit to the Jodrell Bank Observatory. Fascinating stories were told about "weak signals" and how they have enormously contributed to further understanding of the universe. Certainly this visit demonstrated interesting ways to think about the future in other disciplines.

Thursday's fourth module "Outcome, interpretation and reporting" started with a controversial discussion regarding the interpretation and use of quantitative and qualitative data in foresight studies. Examples of successfully implemented quantitative models in African foresight initiatives have included evidence regarding the importance of combining methods and data.

Overviews of several European outputs such as Delphi studies, were discussed in detail with a particular emphasis on some countries' experiences and actions taken to obtain satisfactory results. The next presentation touched a sensitive and complex issue: social foresight. Deep evaluation of social changes in time as well as the diversity of social values and norms illustrated the risks and uncertainties of engaging social foresight.

Profound evaluation of processes and outcomes provided some answers to the question: How useful can foresight be? In addition, meticulous track of foresight outcomes in different countries, followed by the UK evaluation of some impacts in wealth creation and quality of life illustrated some reasons and motivations for undertaking a national foresight study. The practical exercise on outputs and intervention reinforced the learning process and remarkable agreement regarding interventionism in national foresight exercises was demonstrated in both working groups.

A lecture on foresight from the business side showed the way scenarios are used to identify changes in consumers' behaviour and potential markets. Later on, a presentation fully committed to explaining the use of scenarios in foresight managed to give the audience a better understanding regarding the importance of achieving a large variety of visions for the future.

The fifth module "New developments" dealt with changes regarding the orientation of recent foresight. Outlining the latest European initiatives focused on global issues in the fields of science and society, as well as the growth within processes and cluster-oriented foresight together with the influence of new technological developments (i.e. ICT and bio-technology). These examples provided the participants with some visions of the future of foresight.

Finally the two workgroups of participants were asked to present their seventh practical exercise, consisting of programme proposals for the sponsor of a national foresight study of an imaginary central European state aiming to enter the European Union by the year 2010. The main intention of the exercise was to use group presentations in order to create global recall of the material covered and use self-motivation and experimentation techniques to maximize the learning level.

The closing remarks session searched for weak links within the study programme and each participant's appreciation about the lecturers in order to improve future training courses. Great satisfaction, fulfilment of expectations and extraordinary integration of the participants in both personal and professional levels were some of the outcomes of the Spring 2002 foresight training course in Manchester.