Foresight

Citation

(2000), "Foresight", Work Study, Vol. 49 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ws.2000.07949aaa.004

Foresight

Foresight

The Institute of Management Services (of whom I am a member of council) - that does not sound quite right grammatically, but I am sure you know what I mean - has recently been working with the UK Government's Foresight Initiative. What surprised me, is how good this actually is - there is some astonishingly useful information contained in the Foresight "knowledge pool". It is good to see government, academia and industry working together collaboratively. Michael Porter, in an address to the World Productivity Congress last October, suggested that innovative capacity is at its greatest when research is funded by both government and industry - and when a significant amount of that research takes place in universities. Perhaps we are getting a part of the solution right; unfortunately, Porter's analysis suggested that we are underperforming - we do the basic research and publish widely but we turn insufficient numbers of such projects into international patents. Foresight offers a chance to redeem ourselves!