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Information and communication technology (ICT) is increasingly being used in the home environment, making it a very important and interesting research topic for communication scientists. Future developments will influence the way and the extent to which ICT will be used in the home environment and therefore the way people look for information, communicate, make use of entertainment services and carry out transactions. However, it is still very difficult to make meaningful and accurate forecasts with regard to the possible future use and acceptance of ICT in people’s homes. Important reasons are, for example, that more and more market parties are involved in the development of innovative ICT products and services. This makes developments more complex and the outcomes more uncertain. Furthermore, consumers play an important role in the development of new ICT‐based information, communication, transaction and entertainment services. Since a precise prediction of the possible use of ICT in domestic environments in 2010 is hard to make, other methods of futures research must be used. Combining technological forecasting with scenario thinking is such a research method, whereon, technological forecasting shows the major trends in the specific technology domain, while scenarios cover the possible future worlds. By giving end‐users a central place in these scenarios, the diversity of the use and acceptance of innovative products and services is captured. Thus, the addition of scenarios to the technology trends gives insight into the possibilities (and impossibilities) of new ICT‐technologies and the way they may be used in the home environment.

In this paper, we examine the roles of innovation experts in organizations as part of a new and evolving field of knowledge. In our examination, we integrate two fields of study: the rise of new experts in organizations and the development of role identity. Our main goal is to map the epistemological processes these new experts go through coupled with their perceived identity, roles, and duties. Based on interviews with 33 innovation experts in profit and nonprofit organizations, we analyze the role expectations, the complexities associated with this role, and the unfolding identity processes. The analysis is based on three analytical lenses for understanding the identity processes of innovation experts in organizations: “becoming,” “doing,” and “relating.” Our findings are that identity work is needed to facilitate adaptation and reduce ambiguity in the work of innovation experts.

This paper aims to develop a framework for benchmarking the maturity of public sector foresight programs and outlines strategies that program managers can use to overcome obstacles to foresight program development in government.

The public sector foresight benchmarking framework is informed by a bibliometric analysis and comprehensive review of the literature on public sector foresight, as well as three rounds of semi-structured interviews conducted over the course of a collaborative 18-month project with a relatively young department-level foresight program at the government of an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) country. The paper frames public sector organizations as “complex adaptive systems” and draws from other government initiatives that require fundamental organizational change, namely, “gender mainstreaming”.

Nascent or less mature programs tend to be output-focused and disconnected from the policy cycle, while more mature programs balance outputs and participation as they intervene strategically in the policy cycle. Foresight program development requires that managers simultaneously pursue change at three levels: technical, structural and cultural. Therefore, successful strategies are multi-dimensional, incremental and iterative.

The paper addresses two important gaps in the literature on public sector foresight programs by comprehensively describing the key attributes of mature and immature public sector foresight programs, and providing flexible, practical strategies for program development. The paper also pushes the boundaries of thinking about foresight by integrating insights from complexity theory and complexity-informed organizational change theory.

This paper seeks to evaluate future studies in order to improve futures research.

Case studies were researched.

The current study of the future carried out by the Dutch Innovation Platform (responsible for innovation policy) resembles an old‐fashioned utopism whereas a study conducted in 1977 by the Dutch Council for Government Policy yields very interesting results.

Only two case studies have been researched.

Lessons learned or the evaluation of former studies of the future can be very interesting and supportive but one must be aware that they are not golden rules for doing futures research in the future itself.

Although futures researchers often look back at other studies of the future it remains an important activity in improving futures research.

In the telecommunication industry we observe trends such as unbundling, convergence, and new business models. To accelerate innovation, mobile telecommunication companies are more and more working together with companies from other industrial sectors (such as media and IT). The Cyclic Innovation Model helps to understand all those activities in this rather chaotic business environment. This particularly applies to mobile telecommunication companies that are developing mobile data innovations (such as Lucio). All those innovations are steps along a transition path towards a wireless future.

This paper aims to describe three major difficulties with dealing with the future.

The paper is an essay with limited use of literature.

Looking to the future is difficult due to cognitive, social, business problems.

No empirical research was conducted.

Suggests that more practical training in futures research and testing ideas and plans against future trends is required.

The paper provides a broad view on difficulties of dealing with the future.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the future‐orientation of the Dutch innovation system and formulate recommendations to improve it.

The approach takes the form of in‐depth interviews with Dutch experts who are sufficiently independent to formulate relevant, interesting, and deviating opinions.

Dutch managers are quite reluctant to look at the future. They seem to favor the short term above the long term.

Consulting additional experts might yield more and more validated results.

Dutch companies should do more about turning a future vision into concrete decisions and actions.

It is necessary to appoint a specific Minister for Innovation and the Dutch government should support the entire innovation process and not just the beginning.

This is the first analysis of the future‐orientation of the Dutch innovation system.

In recent decades, innovation management has changed. This article provides an overview of the changes that have taken place, focusing on innovation management in large companies, with the aim of explaining that innovation management has evolved toward a contextual approach, which it will explain and illustrate using two cases.

The basic approach in this article is to juxtapose a review of existing literature regarding trends in innovation management and research and development (R&D) management generations, and empirical data about actual approaches to innovation.

The idea that there is a single mainstream innovation approach does not match with the (successful) approaches companies have adopted. What is required is a contextual approach. However, research with regard to such an approach is fragmented. Decisions to adapt the innovation management approach to the newness of an innovation or the type of organization respectively have thus far been investigated separately.

An integrated approach is needed to support the intuitive decisions managers make to tailor their innovation approach to the type of innovation, organization(s), industry and country/culture.

The practical and scientific value of this paper is that is describes an integrated approach to contextual innovation.

Inspired by new findings on and perceptions of risk governance, such as the necessity of taking a broader perspective in coping with risks in companies and working together in interactive groups with various stakeholders to deal with complex risks in the modern world, the purpose of this paper is looking for new ways to deal with financial risks. Current methods dealing with those risks are confronted with the problems of being primarily based on past data and experience, neglecting the need for objectivity, focusing on the short-term future and disregarding the interconnectedness of different financial risk categories.

A literature review of risk governance, financial risk management and open foresight was executed to conceptualize solutions to the mentioned-above problems.

Collaborative financial risk assessment (CFRA) is a promising approach in financial risk governance with respect to overcoming said problems. It is a method of risk identification and assessment, which combines aspects of “open foresight” and the financial risk management and governance literature. CFRA is characterized as bringing together members of different companies in trying to detect weak signals and trends to gain knowledge about the future, which helps companies to reduce financial risks and increase the chance of gaining economic value. By overcoming organizational boundaries, individual companies may gain the knowledge they would probably not have without CFRA and achieve a competitive advantage.

A conceptual paper like the one at hand wants empirical proof. Therefore, the authors developed a research agenda in the form of five propositions for further research.

This paper discusses the existing problems of financial risk identification and assessment methods. It contributes to the existing literature by proposing CFRA as a solution to those problems and adding a new perspective to financial risk governance.

An uncertain future means that Dutch government ministries need to think about not only what new policies have to be developed, but also how to organize themselves in the future. This paper aims to present an overview and analysis of various studies of the futures by and about Dutch ministries that show that these studies vary considerably, in terms of their process and cause, that the context in which they come about plays a major role and that the various ministries tend to take the same trends into account (for instance “life‐long‐learning”, sustainable development and the emergence of the demanding citizen).

The paper case studies: 11 different reports from nine different Dutch ministries. In each ministry an in‐depth interview with one or two representatives was held. The transcripts were summarized, structured, and analyzed.

The use of studies of the future for organizational change in Dutch ministries is very diverse. More and more images and other ways of visualizing the future are becoming important. Dutch ministries should find a good balance between hiring external expertise and using inside knowledge and expertise.

Because this is a case study it is questionable whether the findings are also valid for non‐researched ministries, especially since the research ministries and (their) studies of the future are very diverse.

More discussion is needed about these futures studies in the Government‐wide Strategic Council. Government‐wide studies of the future should be made to provide ministries with a common background in building up a future vision for (more balanced) policy making. There should be more involvement of external experts and stakeholders in the process of futures studies.

This is the first case study that focuses specifically on the use of studies of the future for governmental change (instead of focusing on. for instance, developing new policies or strategies).