New Strategic Foresight in EU

The article deals with the consideration of the concept and practice of the new strategic foresight being developed in the European Union. It summarizes the EU's experience in clarifying the conceptual framework, in the conceptual apparatus, methodology and expected practice of using strategic foresight for the development and implementation of policies to achieve the declared goals of long-term development. The main attention is paid to the analysis of four interrelated factors assessed by the European Commission as determining its target setting for sustainable development: socio-economic, geopolitical, green and digital, as well as issues of political decisions monitoring. Based on the results of the work, conclusions were made that are of fundamental importance for the formation of the prognostic component of domestic policy, with a focus on the general socio-economic and political conditions necessary to create a strategic forecasting system that is not yet available in Russia, adequate to the requirements of modern development.

Strategic Foresight in the One CGIAR: Gaps and Needs in Approaches and Capacity

This document is part of a series of working papers, produced as part of foresight-related research supported by the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM), and intended to provide a focused, forward-looking perspective on key issues to support discussion on food, land, and water systems transformation. This is a special edition of the series, based on the cumulative experiences of the CGIAR Foresight Community of Practice and recent One CGIAR Initiative development activities. This version is shared for discussion and comment. A final version will be made available at http://foresight.cgiar.org.

Leveraging Strategic Foresight to Advance Worker Safety, Health and Well-Being

Attending to the ever-expanding list of factors impacting work, the workplace, and the workforce will require innovative methods and approaches for occupational safety and health (OSH) research and practice. This paper explores strategic foresight as a tool that can enhance OSH capacity to anticipate, and even shape, the future as it pertains to work. Equal parts science and art, strategic foresight includes the development and analysis of plausible alternative futures as inputs to strategic plans and actions. Here, we review several published foresight approaches and examples of work-related futures scenarios. We also present a working foresight framework tailored for OSH and offer recommendations for next steps to incorporate strategic foresight into research and practice in order to advance worker safety, health, and well-being.

Strategic Sensitivity and Corporate Responsiveness of Fast Moving Consumer Goods Companies in Rivers State, Nigeria

Purpose: This study examined the relationship between strategic sensitivity and corporate responsiveness of fast moving consumer goods companies in Rivers State, Nigeria. Methodology: The study adopted a cross sectional survey research design. The population of this study was nine (9) fast moving consumer goods companies in Rivers State. Since the unit of analysis was at organizational level, only strategic managers were included. Five managers each were used for each company giving a total of 45 respondents. Census was adopted because the population was small. Primary data was collected using a 5-point Likert scaled questionnaire. The reliability of the instrument was achieved by the use of the Cronbach Alpha coefficient with all the items scoring above 0.70. The hypotheses were tested using the Spearman’s Rank Order Correlation Coefficient with the aid of Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 23.0. The tests were carried out at a 95% confidence interval and a 0.05 level of significance. After data cleaning, only data for 38 respondents were used for data analysis. Findings: The findings revealed that there is a significant positive relationship between strategic sensitivity and corporate responsiveness of fast moving consumer goods companies in Rivers State, Nigeria. Specifically, strategic foresight and strategic insight were significantly and positively correlated with corporate responsiveness of fast moving consumer goods companies in Rivers State, Nigeria. Recommendation: The study recommends that fast moving consumer goods companies should build its capabilities of strategic foresight in examining the dynamic business environment and should constantly and proactively scan for opportunities and threats, in addition to strategies for lowering or reducing cost of production compare to other competitors.

Agile Roadmapping: An Adaptive Approach to Technology Foresight

Technology roadmapping has become an important foresight tool for science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy and technology strategy development. There are, however, challenges in translating evidence from foresight into the strategies of STI agencies and the planning of research & technology development (RTD) organizations. While the foresight evaluation literature identifies methodological issues related to evidence granularity, scope, and stakeholder confidence, there is limited guidance on how to ensure roadmapping outputs are strategically relevant, appropriately detailed, and credible. This paper highlights the potential of using structured visual roadmapping frameworks to anticipate potential strategic foresight evidence failures and using the adaptive and iterative nature of roadmapping processes to address them. In this paper, we distinguish between: the roadmapping framework ‘canvas’; the foresight evidence captured on the canvas; the process of generating the evidence; and any final strategic plan developed using that evidence (with goals, milestones, actions, etc). We investigate efforts to use the roadmapping canvas as a research tool and diagnostic to explore emerging technology trajectories and innovation ‘pathways’. We demonstrate that key patterns of evidence distribution on the roadmapping canvas have the potential to reveal where further evidence may need to be gathered, or where further triangulation of stakeholder perspectives may be required. We argue that by adaptively addressing these patterns at key stages within the roadmapping process (and appropriately re-scoping, re-prioritizing, and re-focusing foresight effort and resources), the granularity, coverage, and consensus of the roadmapping evidence can be greatly enhanced. We conclude the paper by summarizing a set of novel principles for adaptive agile roadmapping, reflecting on the implications for foresight more generally, and outlining a future research agenda to test and refine this approach to agile foresight.