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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the alternative future scenarios for the international biomass market until the year 2020 and identify underlying steps needed toward a vital working and sustainable biomass market for energy purposes.

Two scenario processes were conducted for the study. A heuristic, semi‐structured approach, including the use of preliminary questionnaires as well as manual and computerised group support systems (GSS), was applied in the scenario processes.

The scenarios estimated that the biomass market will develop and grow rapidly as well as diversify in the future. The scenario analysis shows the key issues in the field: global economic growth including the growing need for energy, environmental forces in the global evolution, the potential of technological development in solving the global problems, capabilities of the international community to find solutions for the global issues, and the complex interdependencies of all these driving forces.

Further research is needed involving analysis of the probabilities of the technological and commercial elements in each scenario. It is also important to conceptualise the scale and directions of biomass trade streams and determine the influences of the scenarios from the viewpoints of different actors.

The results of the scenario processes provide a starting point for further research analysing the technological and commercial aspects of the scenarios and foreseeing the scales and directions of biomass streams.

In this study, scenario processes supplemented by a GSS are applied for investigating the future development of the biomass market.

This study aims to examine the underlying statements with regard to strategic directions and action programmes on tourism found in the state-of-the-nation address (SONA) speeches of six Philippine presidents – from 1987 to 2019. The researchers believe that president SONAs are usually reflective of their plans and are strong indicators of their interest, which could particularly influence the Philippine tourism planning and development. Currently, the lack of guidance in the theoretical framework and research discussion in exploring the Philippine tourism policy and development priorities using presidents’ SONA speeches are found wanting. Scenario planning approach was used as a framework.

Scenario planning approach requires inputs from an advisory group to create scenario drivers. As inputs, the presidents’ SONA speeches were used in this study while the researchers assumed the role of scenario thinkers. The speeches were downloaded and imported into a qualitative data software. Through a series of text search with regard to strategic directions and action programmes on tourism, underlying statements were subjected to content analysis to create nodes. The nodes were used as the basis in creating scenario drivers, which became the basis in creating the model. The models underwent the following validation procedures: researcher, concept and literature review.

Based on the data, there are three identified major drivers of the present and future of Philippine tourism; these are tourism policy, tourism development and prospects for the future (temporal element). It also indicates tourism development and temporal element as dominant, with very few on tourism policies. By combining the tourism policy and tourism development, the development of the tourism policy and development confluence model was created. Meanwhile, the addition of the temporal element provided a third scenario driver that led to the creation of the dimensions of tourism policy and development scenarios.

The developed model can be adapted to many contexts that extend even outside of tourism. The public tourism offices, such as the department of tourism and the regional, provincial, city and municipal tourism offices, can use the model to help them prioritise tourism development programmes and lobby for tourism policy creation.

The model will significantly assist decision-makers and policymakers to be conscious in crafting and enacting their tourism plans and programmes. It presents tourism policy and tourism development as scenario drivers that are interrelated; hence, a mutual relationship between the executive and legislative sectors of the government can be expected.

The study positions its originality and value in three areas: scenario planning, tourism future and president’s interest in tourism. In terms of scenario planning, the study was able to present interaction among three scenario drivers compared to most models that only have two. In the area of tourism future studies, this study claims that qualitative historical data can also be used to predict future scenarios. Despite the limited literature examining the tourism interest of the top-level administration, using speeches made by head of state is found plausible to predict the future of Philippine tourism.

Many devices needed electrical power to work, thus, major energy carriers such as oil and gas were used to generate electrical power via converter mechanisms and special technologies. The microturbine is a developed technology that is remarkable for its relatively high performance and ability to use several types of fuels. Microturbines are economically feasible because of the production of combined heat and power and small-scale applicability. This study aims to investigate microturbine technology development to support modern energy access in a developing country (i.e. Iran).

This paper presents a technology foresight methodology to create plausible futures of microturbine development in Iran when the country faces different driving forces and uncertainties. On other hand, the paper deals with a theoretical question: how to select appropriate foresight methodology? A procedure is proposed, which equipped the research team to select appropriate method combinations based on Popper’s diamond. Finally, the selected methodology includes defining focal issues environmental scanning and patent analysis aimed at developing five plausible scenarios for microturbine development future in Iran and creating shared visions among policymakers.

This paper proposed a series of scenarios on the path to developing microturbine technology. The scenario development logic in a participatory way contains a common four-quarter technique that attempts to depict scenarios based on two critical uncertainties inclusive energy price and technology obsolescence, which will shape the future. Also, a scenario is presented to describe a wild card that can disturb the desired futures. Such materials help decision-makers to policies under plausible conditions that guarantee a robust policy basket.

The originality of this paper can be studied based on two aspects, first, the methodology that provides a systematic method selections procedure in an emerging complex technology development program. Second, from the practical aspect, this paper is one of the very first attempts to manage the microturbine technology development program. Then, results are used to feed the policy-making process in Iran.

Dynamic changes in the world bring challenges for making long-term future-oriented policy and strategy. A number of recent developments like drops in oil prices, increasing global conflicts, mass immigration and economic stagnation have had disruptive effects on long-term policies and strategies. The purpose of this paper is to provide a dynamic and adaptive Foresight approach as required by the fast-changing global landscape.

The scenario approach presented in the paper aims to develop multiple time horizons by bringing together short-term forecasts and long-term exploratory and visionary scenarios. Each time horizon allows for re-considering and dynamically changing drivers and assumptions of scenarios and thus builds not a single linear, but multiple and dynamic pathways into the future. Following the presentation on the background and description of the methodology, the paper illustrates the proposed approach with a case study on science and technology (S&T) development in Russia.

The flexible scenario approach allows developing and strategies with similar adaptability and flexibility.

The scenario approach presented in the paper may be applicable for Foresight exercises at all levels of governance, including national, international, regional and corporate.

A novel scenario approach is presented for the formulation of S&T policy with an illustrative case study.

This article aims to show the opportunity and benefits of linking territorial foresight tools to urban planning procedures. Additionally, it suggests ways to reinforce the scenario design method with more in‐depth analysis, without losing its qualitative nature and communication advantages.

These assumptions are tested in a scenario design exercise that explores the future evolution of the sustainable development paradigm and its implications in the Spanish urban development model.

Major findings are obtained on the feasibility of a systematic approach that provides anticipatory intelligence about future disruptive events that may affect the natural environment and the socioeconomic fabric of a given territory. In addition, the study confirms that foresight offers interesting opportunities for urban planners, such as anticipating changes, fostering participation and building networks, in contrast to its perception as a mere story‐telling technique that generates oversimplified visions without the backing of rigorous analysis.

In order to boost the perception of scenario design as an added value instrument for urban planners, three sets of implications – functional, parametric and spatial – are displayed to provide substantial information for policy makers.

The value of the present work lies in the synergy that can be generated between territorial foresight and urban planning, offering a great opportunity for policy makers to use futurists' output as input for urban planners' work.

Scenario planning is a useful approach that helps policymakers to better understand the complexity and uncertainties that lie in the future and to choose the right policy mix to support the development of renewable and affordable energy sources. In this regard, this paper aims to present renewable energy (RE) development scenarios in Iran in the horizon of 2030.

Following the intuitive logic school and the Global Business Network model, the authors identified seven driving forces, according to the expert’s judgment, by brainstorming techniques which influence REs development in the horizon of 2030. By prioritizing driving forces based on their importance and uncertainty, “sustainable and green economy” and “emerging technology development” are the most instrumental uncertainties and the authors formed a two-axis scenario matrix with each representing an axis.

The results suggest four main scenarios of “Transition to Sustainability with Green Gold,” “Towards Sustainability with Green Gold,” “Productivity with Black Gold” and “Desperation with Black Gold.” They include a wide range of possible situations of energy basket in the future ranging from dominance of fossil fuels to dominance of REs. The “Productivity with Black Gold” and the “Towards Sustainability with Green Gold” are the most probable scenarios of RE development by 2030 in Iran.

This paper indicates that the dominance of oil and gas resources would impede or at least slow down the development of renewable and affordable energy sources. Although the economic and environmental potentials and the inevitability of REs are well-understood, path dependence created by fossil fuels in Iran’s energy regime, either partially or fully, hinders the widespread development of REs which is the case in other resource-based countries as well.

Research focussed on the scenario method has increasingly criticized the widely used intuitive logics (IL) approach to scenario development and introduced enhanced approaches, such as the backwards logic method (BLM) or the antifragile (AF) method, to overcome the restrictions associated with the IL approach. The BLM and the AF method have contributed to the further development of the scenario method by integrating backward reasoning and by increasing the method’s effectiveness for decision making. The purpose of this paper is to build on these ideas and introduce strategy scenarios as a further enhancement of the scenario method that directly applies the benefits of scenario-based planning to strategy development in corporations.

The authors argue that the existing methodologies do not fully integrate the benefits of scenario-based planning for strategic decision making and strategy development, as they mostly aim to develop macroenvironmental scenarios and test organizations’ existing strategies.

The paper suggests that changing the scope of scenario planning from environmental developments to the organization’s strategies themselves can further strengthen the method’s effectiveness for decision making.

The strategy scenario approach provides an enhanced approach to more comprehensively utilize the benefits of scenario-based reasoning for strategic decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new and systematic approach towards strategic foresight by combining traditional external scenarios (market‐based approach) with internal scenarios (resource‐based approach) into a future scorecard, which can be used to describe alternative internal development paths for an organization.

The paper builds on the existing literature as well as on multiple case examples to illustrate the application of the future scorecard.

The findings of this paper are that it is possible to combine the external (market‐based) and internal (resource‐based) view to create a strategic early warning system.

The implications for practitioners are twofold, first, the paper outlines the importance of integrating a future perspective into performance measurement systems, second, it demonstrates the applicability of scenario thinking for the internal resource‐based view of the firm.

The paper combines thinking of the market‐based and the resource‐based view of the firm in order to provide a new tool to supplement most static measurement approaches with a tool that monitors the future developments – externally and internally. Scenarios are traditionally used to describe possible alternative future developments in the external environment, which then inform current strategy assessment and future strategy development. However, with a shift in focus away from the market‐based paradigm and towards a resource‐based view of strategy, scenarios can also be used to describe alternative internal development paths for an organization. These two types of scenarios can then be systematically developed and combined to form a significant element of a strategic early warning system – the future scorecard.

Although the significance of technological progress in economic development is well-established in theory and policy, it has remained challenging to agree upon shared priorities for strategies and policies. This paper aims to develop a model of how policymakers can develop effective and easy to communicate strategies for science, technology and economic development.

By integrating insights from economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature, a replicable research framework for analysing the opportunities and challenges of technological revolutions for small catching-up countries is developed. The authors highlight key lessons from piloting this framework for informing the strategy and policies for bioeconomy in Estonia towards 2030–2050.

The integration of economic complexity research with traditional foresight methods establishes a solid analytical basis for a data-driven analysis of the opportunities for industrial upgrading. The increase in the importance of regional alliances in the global economy calls for further advancement of the analytical toolbox. Integration of complexity, global value chains and export potential assessment approaches offers valuable direction for further research, as it enables discussion of the opportunities of moving towards more knowledge-intensive economic activities along with the opportunities for winning international market share.

The research merges insights from the economic complexity, competitiveness and foresight literature in a novel way and illustrates the applicability and priority-setting in a real-life setting.

To survive and grow in an era of uncertainty, companies should strive not only for a single visionary view, which most likely corresponds with their expectations, but instead they should try to acquire multiple views that describe the whole ”window of opportunities”. The development of external market scenarios to assess current strategies is the usual way of coping with these uncertainties. Today this traditional scenario approach has to be extended in four directions: the use of market scenarios to systematically develop future‐robust strategies, the use of alternative strategy scenarios to address uncertainties within an organization, the use of scenarios as a basis for strategic early warning processes and the combination of performance measurement and strategic early warning in a scenario‐based future scorecard. In conclusion it is shown that scenarios could significantly help to bridge the gap between strategy implementation and early‐warning processes.