The New ‘Passive Revolution’ of the Green Economy and Growth Discourse: Maintaining the ‘Sustainable Development’ of Neoliberal Capitalism

This paper analyses the rapidly emerging discourse of a green economy based on green growth. It highlights inherent conflicts and contradictions of this discourse such as the myth of decoupling growth from the environment, pollution generations and resource consumption. Using key theoretical constructs of both Gramsci and Polanyi, the paper argues that the green economy/growth discourse can be seen as a Gramscian ‘passive revolution’ whereby the dominant sustainable development discourse, subsumed by capitalist hegemony, is protected in the context of global environmental, economic and development crises. The ‘neoliberalising of nature’, or in other words, the privatisation, marketisation and commodification of nature, akin to Polanyi's fictitious commodities, continues and intensifies with green economy/growth strategies. Greening the economy and associated strategies of green growth divert attention from the social and political dimensions of sustainability and issues of social and international justice. In this way, the inexorable march or ‘sustainable development’ of neoliberal capitalism is maintained. This paper goes on to argue that contesting the claims of green economy/growth discourse through political struggles by civil society against the neoliberalisation of nature is a sign of a slowly emerging counter-hegemonic ‘double movement’ which challenges capitalist hegemony and the commodification of society–nature relations.     

Future-oriented technology analysis as a driver of strategy and policy

The methodology known as strategic foresight is an important tool to be used in long-term strategic planning activities and in support of the decision making process in public as well as private sectors. This article addresses the use of strategic foresight applied to the strategic management plan for an agency that deals with the funding and promotion for the development of science, technology and innovation in Brazil, and the logic that permeated its construction, promoting an alliance of the concepts of strategy and foresight. It has as key elements the long-term vision and the adoption of participatory approach and qualitative and quantitative methods. The methodological framework involved the use of different techniques, methods and tools, including, among others, web survey, diagnosis, SWOT, future timeline, interviews, workshops and strategic roadmap.     

Social dilemmas,time preferences and technology adoption in a commons problem

Agents interacting on a body of water choose between technologies to catch fish. One is harmless to the resource, as it allows full recovery; the other yields high immediate catches, but low(er) future catches. Strategic interaction in one ‘objective’ resource game may induce several ‘subjective’ games in the class of social dilemmas. Which unique ‘subjective’ game is actually played depends crucially on how the agents discount their future payoffs. We examine equilibrium behavior and its consequences on sustainability of the common-pool resource system under exponential and hyperbolic discounting. A sufficient degree of patience on behalf of the agents may lead to equilibrium behavior averting exhaustion of the resource, though full restraint (both agents choosing the ecologically or environmentally sound technology) is not necessarily achieved. Furthermore, if the degree of patience between agents is sufficiently dissimilar, the more patient is exploited by the less patient one in equilibrium. We demonstrate the generalizability of our approach developed throughout the paper. We provide recommendations to reduce the enormous complexity surrounding the general cases.     

Beyond the veil — The real value of Foresight

The wide application of foresight would benefit from a common assessment framework that hardly exists. This would require a higher level of reference, i.e. pursuing more generic goals. This is offered by the two concepts of “knowledge society” and “participatory governance”. The aim of the research is to develop an impact assessment framework of foresight programmes in developing more participatory “knowledge societies” beyond their specific aims.Research shows that the major impacts of foresight belong to three groups, i.e. in relation to knowledge, network creation, and promoting public engagement in policy-making. At the same time, the major features of modern societies are of three types, i.e. related to knowledge value, to innovation-driven growth and to consequences of a “risk society”. Thus, the relevant areas where foresight might contribute are: knowledge, networking, and coping with a ‘risk society’.The new framework is built on the features and pre-conditions of more participatory societies and draws upon existing evaluation approaches and concepts (“theory-based evaluation”, “knowledge value framework”, “behavioural” and “cognitive capacity additionality”) to tackle short-comings of earlier evaluation efforts. It is then tested in a case study that demonstrates its feasibility and comprehensiveness and further refines the assessment criteria it is based on.     

‘Technology foresight towards 2020 in China’: the practice and its impacts

Technology foresight has attracted increasing attention from government and academia as well as industry since the 1990s. However, the impact of technology foresight on national strategic decision-making varies from country to country. This paper aims to introduce the ‘Technology Foresight towards 2020’ exercise in China, which has been conducted by a research group in the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The paper consists of five parts: (1) introduction; (2) the framework for technology foresight towards 2020 in China; (3) the methodology including scenario building for identifying technology demands and the method for processing and analysing the data from a Delphi survey; (4) the major results of a Delphi survey in the following four research fields: Information technology, Biotechnology, Energy technology, Material science and technology; and (5) the impact of the research on decision-making concerning science and technology development in China.     

Foresight in science and technology

Emerging generic technologies seem set to make a revolutionary impact on the economy and society. However, success in developing such technologies depends upon advances in science. Confronted with increasing global economic competition, policy-makers and scientists are grappling with the problem of how to select the most promising research areas and emerging technologies on which to target resources and, hence, derive the greatest benefits. This paper analyzes the experiences of Japan, the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, New Zealand and the UK in using foresight to help in selecting and exploiting research that is likely to yield longer-term economic and social benefits. It puts forward a model of the foresight process for identifying research areas and technologies of strategic importance, and also analyzes why some foresight exercises have proved more successful than others. It concludes by drawing an analogy between models of innovation and foresight.     

Foresight: A major tool in tackling sustainable development

For many decades, the concept of sustainability has been highly successful in public policies and even in the business world.¹ Nowadays, all initiatives must be sustainable and are primarily assessed on that criterion. However, the efforts made to construct specific methods dedicated to building sustainable strategies seem rather weak. Futurists themselves underestimate the relationship between sustainable development and foresight, even if they are talking about sustainable planning.² They remain generally unaware that foresight could be a major tool in tackling sustainability as well as one of the best methods of preparing sustainable strategies and policies.Indeed, one of the biggest problems in sustainability approaches is the simplistic way used to define the concept, for instance, by using only the very first part of the 1987 the Bruntland report Our Common Future and by limiting the fields of activity on sustainability to the three pillars of the OECD model: economy, social questions, environment.At the Copenhagen United Nations Climate Change Conference (December 2009), it seemed forgotten that sustainability is already an old issue in which futurists were heavily involved at the time of the United Nations Stockholm Environment Conference (1972), in the Limits to Growth Report, published by the Club of Rome (1972)³ and in the OECD Interfutures Foresight, spurred on by Jacques Lesourne (1978).⁴Since that time (forty years ago!) researchers and consultants have learned how to deal with the concept of sustainability, how to analyze it as an ultimate aim for society as a whole as well as a complex object that needs to be approached with adequate methods such as systemic analysis.As Christian Stoffaës said, the aim of foresight is sustainable development in a changing world. As a result, the ultimate aim of strategic foresight appears to be clear: it is sustainability. This article highlights that fundamental relationship as we see it today.⁵     

Consumer foresight,customer data,and investment in targeting technology

We analyze competing firms’ incentives to adopt a technology that allows making refined targeted offers to returning customers. Consumer foresight is crucial for firms’ decisions. Although our setup is symmetric, when consumers are myopic, the unique equilibrium is asymmetric in firms’ technology adoption decisions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, consumers may be better off being myopic than sophisticated. Light privacy policy may benefit consumers if it reduces the costs of handling customer data and avoids strict obligations on firms to inform consumers about data use, which would erode investment incentives into targeting technology.     

Environmental technology foresight: New horizons for technology management

Decision-making in corporate technology management and government technology policy is increasingly influenced by the environmental impact of technologies. Technology foresight (TF) and environmental impact assessment (EIA) are analyzed with regard to the roles they can play in developing long-term strategies and policies for reducing the environmental impact of technologies. The methods for TF and EIA are quite well developed, but remain within a tradition of rational decision-making. However, recent studies of tecnology management and innovation have shown that technology development can be explained only to a certain degree by rational decision-making. EIA is usually presented as an objective and scientific method, based on normative underpinnings that usually remain hidden. Thus, systematic information-providing instruments such as TF and EIA can play only a limited role. We propose a procedure for environmental technology foresight. The case is made that environmental technology management will be most helped by a 'constructive' approach in order to stimulate incorporation of long-term environmental objectives.     

The Increasing Importance of Geoeconomics in Power Rivalries in the Twenty-First Century

Relations between states in the post-Cold War period have been shaped by an increased economic competition including ‘non-market’ factors such as intelligence sharing between state agencies and private businesses, successful economic diplomacy and different techniques to influence and manipulate non-governmental organisations to weaken an economic adversary, among other things. The considerable influence of these non-market factors illustrates the limits of the liberal economic theories that emphasise the dominant role of market forces. Geoeconomics is an interdisciplinary analysis that includes geopolitical factors, economic intelligence, strategic analysis and foresight and has the objective to provide a tool for states and businesses to develop and implement successful strategies to conquer markets, and protect strategic segments of the domestic economy, among other things. This article argues about the growing significance of geoeconomics in contemporary power rivalries, presents some strategic aspects of the role of state in the establishment and coordination of a national geoeconomic disposition, and highlights briefly the importance of the strategic management of information to support geoeconomic strategies. Some arguments of the article ‘Geoeconomic Analysis and the Limits of Critical Geopolitics: A New Engagement with Edward Luttwak’ are briefly discussed as well.     

绿色与非绿色技术对后续创新影响的比较——“厚此薄彼”还是“双赢策略”

尽管绿色技术一直被认为具有广阔的发展前景,但这些技术在企业间的扩散率却很低。企业在非绿色与绿色技术创新关系上存在“厚此薄彼”的现象。基于1992—2019年中国制造业上市公司专利数据研究发现,相较于非绿色技术,绿色技术的前向引用次数更多,且产生了更大的知识溢出效应,对整个社会后续创新具有更大的正向影响力。此外,由于高能耗行业存在转化成本高、自身知识储备不足等问题,随着能耗水平提升,绿色技术对后续创新的正向影响力逐渐减弱。相较于非国有控股企业,国有控股企业绿色技术对后续创新产生了显著正向影响。该结论对政府设计绿色与非绿色创新“双赢策略”,促进企业从“厚此薄彼”转向绿色与非绿色技术双创新具有重要意义。     

Legacy sectors: barriers to global innovation in agriculture and energy

The US national innovation system has a dual structure: part suited to rapid innovation, and part stubbornly resistant to change. The complex, established ‘Legacy sectors’ that resist change, particularly disruptive innovation, share common features that obstruct the market launch of innovations, over and above the ‘valley of death’ and other obstacles that have been the traditional focus of innovation policy. Innovations in Legacy sectors must penetrate a well-established and well-defended technological/economic/political/social paradigm that favours existing technology, characterised by (1) ‘perverse’ subsidies and price structures that create a mismatch between the incentives of producers and broader social goals, such as environmental sustainability, public health and safety, and geopolitical security; (2) established infrastructure and institutional architecture that imposes regulatory hurdles or other disadvantages to new entrants (3) market imperfections beyond those faced by other innovations: network economies, lumpiness, economies of scale, split incentives, needs for collective action, and transaction costs (4) politically powerful vested interests, reinforced by public support, that defend the paradigm and resist innovations that threaten their business models (5) public habits and expectations attuned to existing technology and (6) an established knowledge and human resources structure adapted to its needs. Beyond these obstacles, more socially desirable technologies that are driven by environmental or other non-market considerations must overcome the lack of agreed replacement standards against which putative alternatives can be judged. We have developed a new, integrative analytic framework for categorising the obstacles to market launch faced by Legacy sectors, and earlier applied this method to energy, health delivery, the long-distance electric grid, building, and air transport. In energy especially, the requirement for innovation is sufficiently urgent that large-scale domestic and collaborative international research should take place even at the cost of possible competitive disadvantage and even if it is some time before the USA adopts carbon charges and thereby puts pressure on the prevailing paradigm of fossil fuel use. We now extend this method to sustainable agriculture. American paradigms in agriculture and in energy are exported worldwide, delaying the development and spread of needed innovations that are not consistent with them. Foreign manufacturers wishing to enter US markets must suit their products in these sectors to American paradigms, while American exports of technology may be insufficiently cost conscious or respectful of environmental sustainability. Developing countries are technology takers and suffer from asymmetric innovative capability. They need to choose sources of technology best suited to their situation. India and China constitute new competitive threats, but also represent ‘innovative developing countries’ that have large domestic markets in which they are launching innovations aimed at their lower income populations.     

Improving the business impact of foresight

Achieving an impact on business decision-makers with foresight does not appear to be an easy task. Therefore, the Macro Trends team at Deutsche Bank Research has formulated some criteria to guide foresight projects. They should aim to produce plausibility, provide convenience and inspiration as well as an appropriate time perspective with regard to the content of foresight results. In addition, a structured way of producing and delivering foresight, a seamless inclusion in organisational procedures, a high level of interaction with decision-makers, ideational entrepreneurship, innovation regarding communication with business people, and persistence and synchronisation with the business organisation are the key criteria for achieving a higher impact from foresight projects. To live up to these criteria, the Macro Trends team has developed a ‘trend map’ which provides a conceptual aggregation of trends – to provide orientation for decision-makers and stakeholders.     

Flexible mandates for investment in new technology

Environmental regulators often seek to promote forefront technology for new investments; however, technology mandates are suspected of raising cost and delaying investment. We examine investment choices under an inflexible (traditional) emissions rate performance standard for new sources. We compare the inflexible standard with a flexible one that imposes an alternative compliance payment (surcharge) for emissions in excess of the standard. A third policy allows the surcharge revenue to fund later retrofits. Analytical results indicate that increasing flexibility leads to earlier introduction of new technology, lower aggregate emissions and higher profits. We test this using multi-stage stochastic optimization for introduction of carbon capture and storage, with uncertain future natural gas and emissions allowance prices. Under perfect foresight, the analytical predictions hold. With uncertainty these predictions hold most often, but we find exceptions. In some cases investments are delayed to enable the decision maker to discover additional information.     

Schumpeter, Schumacher and the Greening of Technology

How compatible are the ideas of neo-Schumpeterians (following in the footsteps of Schumpeter, the modern father of technology and innovation studies), and Schumacher, the modern father of sustainable development? At one level, there appears to be a mutually reinforcing and positive relationship between the application of new technology, innovation and improved environmental performance. However, other environmentalists argue that 'global Schumpeter dynamics', by promoting more rapid economic growth worldwide, will swamp any relative improvements in environmental performance and intensity. The tensions between the two perspectives are perhaps most evident in discussions about a possible shift towards a green 'techno-economic paradigm' (TEP). This paper asks whether a green TEP is possible, and what it might look like, in the light of these two perspectives. Neo-Schumpeterians note that while the current information technology TEP shows some sustainability characteristics, it is not inherently 'green'. However, they consider that the groundwork for a sixth, green TEP can be prepared through a mix of policies on research and development, regulation, transport, etc. Schumacher also saw technology as crucial to developing a sustainable world. But his view of sustainability was based on largely self-sufficient and community-led 'intermediate technology' that applied modern science and technology to local settings on an appropriate human and technical scale. What would be the 'key factor' of a green TEP, analogous to the microchip in the fifth, information and communication technology paradigm? A neo-Schumpeterian possibility is hydrogen, in the form of fuel cells. But whether a hydrogen-based society (and economy) can be called 'green', in the sense of the environmental principles espoused by Schumacher, is highly debatable. A less explored possibility - local self-sufficiency - is much more attuned to Schumacher's ideals. This would require people (and their labour) to become the new 'key factor' in a green TEP.     

Strategic technology scanning

This article proposes a procedure for strategic technology scanning, an activity that has received insufficient attention in the literature to date. Strategic technology scanning is needed to strengthen the link between technology and corporate strategy. This link is ever present although not always explicitly managed. For instance, while it is commonly recognized that the corporate mission dictates the technological interests of the organization, it is not always sufficiently emphasized that it is the quality of technology foresight that shapes the corporate mission in the first place.Scanning enhances technology foresight by seeking major distinguishing features in the technological landscape. These features are termed landmark technologies and serve as indicators of evolving technological and economic potential. For the strategic manager landmark technologies can become focal points for understanding the external environment, very much as core competencies have become focal points for understanding the internal capabilities of the organization.The scanning procedure proposed here is tailored to fit conventional procedures for strategic planning. However, it employs new theoretical structures from the field of strategic technology analysis; and calls for involvement of all levels of the corporate hierarchy-from the corporate board to the technology analyst. It seeks to maximize corporate learning.     

Policy assessment and simulation of actor orientation for sustainable development

Understanding, assessing, and simulating behavior requires knowledge of the precepts that are explicitly or implicitly orienting behavior. Human actors can be viewed as (conscious) self-organizing systems attempting to remain viable in a diverse environment containing other self-organizing systems (other human actors, organisms, ecosystems, etc.), all driven by their own viability (sustainability) interests. These fundamental system interests, or basic orientors, have emerged in response to general environmental properties and are therefore identical across self-organizing systems: existence, effectiveness, freedom of action, security, adaptability, coexistence. Even in simulated actors learning to ‘survive’ in a difficult environment, the basic orientors emerge in the (simulated) evolutionary process — but different actors may evolve into different ‘cultural types’ with different orientor emphasis. Since balanced attention to all basic orientors is crucial for viability, the set of orientors can be used to derive indicators that facilitate comprehensive viability and sustainability assessments. The paper outlines the theoretical approach of ‘orientation theory’ and its application to the assessment and simulation of sustainable development issues. The formal approach of mapping indicators on basic orientors and assessing sustainability dynamics is illustrated using Worldwatch indicator time series. In an actor simulation this approach is used to successfully guide a small global model onto a sustainable path with high ‘quality of life’.     

Robots and us: towards an economics of the ‘Good Life’

(Expected) adverse effects of the ‘ICT Revolution’ on work and opportunities for individuals to use and develop their capacities give a new impetus to the debate on the societal implications of technology and raise questions regarding the ‘responsibility’ of research and innovation (RRI) and the possibility of achieving ‘inclusive and sustainable society’. However, missing in this debate is an examination of a possible conflict between the quest for ‘inclusive and sustainable society’ and conventional economic principles guiding capital allocation (including the funding of research and innovation). We propose that such conflict can be resolved by re-examining the nature and purpose of capital, and by recognising mainstream economics’ utilitarian foundations as an unduly restrictive subset of a wider Aristotelian understanding of choice.     

Corporate foresight in Europe: from trend based logics to open foresight

The paper analyses the role of corporate foresight (CF) as a future intelligence gathering process, which has come into widespread use in a business context where it is confronted with specific contextual, processual and methodological challenges. The results of a 2005/2006 survey on CF by the University of St Gallen in co-operation with Z_punkt are used as a starting point to provide insights into the goals, methods and use of CF in large corporations. Taking into account the challenges facing CF and the factors considered critical for its success, the paper outlines a historical contextualisation of CF practices from the 1980s onward, identifying the underlying assumptions – the ‘dominant logic’ – and opting for a new model of CF as ‘open foresight’.     

Medical technology decisions in The Netherlands: How to solve the dilemma of technology foresight versus market research?

In this article, we discuss a dilemma consisting of the market-oriented perspective of users of medical technology versus the long-term technology foresight perspective. The context of medical technology is interesting, because we have to cope with complex future-oriented multi-level and multi-actor strategic decision making. In order to deal with this dilemma we suggest combining the results of a (group) expert opinion forecasting approach with a more market-oriented scenario-approach. More specifically, we use the results of the Delphi-technique as the main input for the development of various capacity (Market-based) scenarios. We exemplify this approach by a real life example directed at the future of imaging techniques for cancer care in The Netherlands and focus on a set of scenarios that deal with the application of the MRI-technique in the period 2005–2015. The Delphi-panel's expectations with respect to imaging technology representing the technological forecasts, combined with other relevant developments (such as demographic and epidemiological developments) are translated into alternative inputs for assumptions of the scenario-model. This model is basic to the future projections in terms of needed MRI-scanners, manpower and investments. We argue that the results provide motivation to continue to explore the methodological interesting area of innovation, aligning the market-oriented perspective of users of (medical) technology with the long-term technology forecasting perspective.