Technology Foresight Activities in Korea and in Countries Closing the Technology Gap

This article discusses technology foresight in selected countries which were politically dependent (colonial) before World War II and considered as “under-developed” in the post-war period. Most of them show considerable economic dynamism in the 1990s, which is not always based on their own scientific and technological capability. For this group of countries, national exercises in technology foresight are likely to be an important tool in planning the strategic direction for science and technology development in order to catch up economically as well as socially. In Korea, which has recently become an OECD member, comparative advantage based on factors such as low wages and protected industries are no longer effective as the economy is now wide open to the world. Foresight is being used to look at comparative advantages based on Korea’s own knowledge-creating activities. In southeast Asian countries, foresight is still in an infant stage, but most of these have medium-term planning cycles and have undertaken longer-term vision studies. In South Africa, a national foresight project is running, as is an adapting foresight process to make the large national research organization fit. In Latin America, an agenda has been set up which indicates the desire of several countries to engage in foresight activities using different approaches.     

National Technology Foresight Activities Around the Globe: Resurrection and New Paradigms

This contribution summarizes recent experiences in government or national technology forecasting which are now often termed “foresight.” While the methodological tool kit changed from mathematical models to more qualitative scenarios or visions, the Delphi method has become the backbone of foresight projects. Recent national activities, being dealt with in this special issue, are compared in terms of their comprehensiveness, their science versus industry orientation, and their analytic versus action-oriented targets. Although some of these are ongoing, we can discern several new foresight paradigms. From the perspectives of sociology and political sciences, foresight elements seem to be the means of communication (or the “wiring up”) for the negotiating systems of the society. From an economics and management point of view, foresight is helpful for benchmarking and for initiating feedback processes between future demand and present day investment in research and development. From a cultural point of view, the resurrection of foresight in the 1990s seems to be related to growing globalization and at the same time the recognition of national or regional innovation systems. Finally, in terms of international affairs supranational foresight seems to become a new venture.     

Foresight with Delphi Surveys in Japan

Foresight activities are conducted in many countries, but the Japanese were the most active in this field for many years. Most of their activities are based on the Delphi methodology. They published their first Delphi study in 1971 and repeated studies every five years. There is more knowledge available on more than 30 years of foresight with the Delphi approach in Japan. This provides an excellent opportunity to examine the established foresight system with the use of some examples. The forecast of the fax machine as an example of success, and the earthquake warning as a failure are illustrated in more detail, and the question is raised why—in spite of this mixed picture—foresight with the Delphi method is regarded as useful in Japan.     

Foresight with Delphi Surveys in Japan

Foresight activities are conducted in many countries, but the Japanese were the most active in this field for many years. Most of their activities are based on the Delphi methodology. They published their first Delphi study in 1971 and repeated studies every five years. There is more knowledge available on more than 30 years of foresight with the Delphi approach in Japan. This provides an excellent opportunity to examine the established foresight system with the use of some examples. The forecast of the fax machine as an example of success, and the earthquake warning as a failure are illustrated in more detail, and the question is raised why—in spite of this mixed picture—foresight with the Delphi method is regarded as useful in Japan.     

Current Foresight Activities in France, Spain, and Italy

Recent years have brought a significant revival of public foresight activities in many European countries, including France, Spain, and Italy. The French context is rather specific in the sense that public planning and foresight (prospective) are an old tradition starting in the early post war period, but was progressively abandoned until its international revival during the 1990s. The recent experiences combine a mix of methods including the experimental reproduction of foreign experiences for long-term science and technology foresight (allowing comparisons of the experts’ opinions between countries) and the development of a specific study of critical technologies in the shorter term with the direct aim of orienting and improving the microeconomic strategies in the country.Spain and Italy started their own tests of foresight procedures later. The diffusion of foresight approaches and methods is certainly influenced by cultural proximities between countries of Roman civilization, but the different national settings led to relatively diverse experiences. International comparisons reveal the wide variety of methods and implementations that can be contemplated at present in Europe—a living laboratory of public foresight experiences.     

Technological generalizations and leitbilder—the anticipation of technological opportunities

Recent national technology foresight studies as well as the Millennium Project of the American Council for the United Nations University are very much based on “nodes of discussion.” These short statements are called, e.g., topics, issues, or developments. This article provides a framework for the classification and analysis of nodes related to future technological development. Key concepts of the article are “technological generalization” and “leitbild.” The topics in the technology foresight Delphi studies can be seen as different kinds of generalizations from already realized technological developments. Leitbild is a German word. Its most general meaning is a guiding image. Like a common vision, a leitbild creates a shared overall goal, offers orientation toward one long-term overall goal, and provides a basis for different professions and disciplines to work in the same direction. The analysis of leitbilder and emerging technological paradigms might contribute to the construction of topics and issues and to the argumentation processes related to them.     

Using Delphi for a Long-Range Technology Forecasting, and Assessing Directions of Future R&D Activities The Korean Exercise

This article summarizes and discusses major findings of the Korean Delphi. The Korean Delphi was first carried out on a large scale. The results of the Korean Delphi include the forecast time of realization and an evaluation of importance for about 1200 technological topics. The forecast time of realization was estimated and compared in both Korea and the world's leading countries. We also provide a comparison of the Delphi results among Korea, Japan, and Germany, with some topics in common in the areas of information, electronics, and communications technology. This study interprets the results of the Delphi and explores the future directions of R&D activities with relevance to the Korean Society.     

Technology Foresight for Wiring Up the National Innovation System: Experiences in Britain, Australia, and New Zealand

Since 1990, technology foresight has spread rapidly. We begin by analyzing the reasons for this before examining the specific political background to technology foresight in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. The article analyzes and compares the approaches to foresight in these countries, identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each approach. We then propose a new rationale for technology foresight, which centers on its role in “wiring up” and thereby strengthening the national innovation system, before arriving at a number of conclusions.     

Personal attitudes in the assessment of the future of science and technology: A factor analysis approach

In 1996, the second German Delphi study (“Delphi '98”) was started. The Delphi '98 is a two-round Delphi expert survey being conducted by the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research (ISI) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry of Education, Research, Science, and Technology (BMBF). The study was published in February 1998, and is now getting into its implementation phase. Its inherent focus is on the development of science and technology in 12 thematic fields in the next 30 years. To arrive at a better understanding of the influence of personal attitudes towards general developments in natural environment and society, the respondents were asked in the first round of the Delphi survey for their personal opinion towards several megatrends concerning the natural environment, economic, sociological, and political developments. Over 2,300 answers led to a very solid database, which gives insights into the general attitudes of the German R&D experts. On some topics, there is a high consensus, whereas in others, opposite opinions coexist. These results may serve as the database for a factor analysis leading to the identification of five different expert types. This paper examines the crucial question of whether different patterns in assessing the future development in science and technology by expert types can be observed. In general, it turned out that differences in personal attitudes towards megatrends do not influence the estimation of developments in science and technology. However, differences exist in specific topics and the distribution of the five experts types among the respondents differs significantly in the 12 fields.     

A Brief Methodological Guide to Scenario Building

This brief guide reviews the philosophical underpinnings of the prospective procedure then strives to explain the concepts and characteristics of this “intellectual undiscipline” which aims not to predict but rather to help shape the future. La prospective contributes to our efforts to gain foresight, an indispensable quality for anyone who wants to be an actor in a future yet to be created. The various stages of the procedure are presented, in particular the scenario method as applied by the author in local, national, and international futures projects for subjects as varied as aging populations, retirement in industrialized countries, and the impact of new technology on production.     

‘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.     

'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.     

Forecasting emerging technologies with the aid of science and technology databases

Short term forecasting was applied to 20 emerging technologies under the “Machine and Materials” category based on the Vision 2023 foresight study previously conducted for Turkey. This scientometric approach uses the most suitable keywords linked to the technology in question and determines the number of publications and patents in those fields for a given year. Database analysis of publications and patents in the previous 11 years indicates that while the majority of the top 20 technologies identified by the experts are indeed emerging (i.e. the number of research and/or patenting in these technologies is increasing), some of them have not actually attracted too much interest in the science and technology (S&T) community. Forecasts based on S-curves indicate steady growth in some of the selected technologies. There is a high correlation between the number of scientific publications and patents in most of the technologies investigated. The method is proposed as a simple and efficient tool to link national foresight efforts to international S&T activities and to obtain quantitative information for prioritized technologies that could be used for technology management and decision making for research funding and technology investment.     

Delphi analysis of national specificities in selected innovative areas in Germany and France

The increasing complexity of the relations between technologies and economics combined with more social pressure, global competition, technological change, as well as national budget restrictions, imply new challenges for public policies. Thus, to be able to forecast the development of knowledge and technological change in some well-known trajectories could be one of the major stakes for science technology and industrial policies. It is then not surprising that recent years have brought a significant revival of public foresight activities in many countries. The purpose of the paper is precisely to propose a new foresight method in order to obtain a taxonomy of the future technologies, and consequently to provide a better understanding of industrial dynamics. We present a statistical analysis of a Delphi investigation, based on scientific and technological knowledge complementarities, in order to obtain coherent clusters, which may be looked upon as a theoretical tool for political decisions. Our methodology is then applied to French and the German sectors of life sciences, elementary particles, energy, environment and natural resources.     

Perceptions of domain experts on impact of foresight on policy making: The case of Japan

In this study, the perceptions of domain experts who participated in foresight activities on the impact on policy making are examined by conducting interviews and surveys on five previous foresights in Japan between 1996 and 2007. The purpose of the study is to examine how domain experts look at the practice of foresight in general, and perceive its overall impact on policy making in particular, in the setting of Japanese foresight conducted in the past 15 years. There are two tasks for doing that in this study: to know the views of scientists and engineers who participated in foresights on the impact of foresights they participated; and to know the effect of respondent's characteristics on their perceptions on impact.There are two main findings of this study. First, the impact on policy making perceived by domain experts who participated in foresight activities in Japan is not very high. Second, there are different patterns of perception on the size of the impact on policy making depending on ages, organizations, member status during foresight, and science and technology areas, and habit of following the situation in general looking for any impacts after the foresight.     

Emergent foresight processes: industrial activities in wireless communications

Technology foresight has received growing attention among those involved in the shaping and implementation of science and technology (S&T) policies. However, although evaluative analyses of foresight exercises have supplied evidence on acclaimed benefits—such as the generation of future-oriented knowledge and strengthening of collaborative networks—they also point to challenges in translating foresight results into actions within research and technology development (RTD) organizations. In this article, we address these challenges by considering the work of the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF), which has sought to promote the conception, development, and diffusion of wireless communication technologies. Specifically, by contrasting this work with well-known government-initiated foresight exercises, we typify so-called explicit, emergent, and embedded foresight activities and explore their interrelationships. Our comparative analysis points to conditions under which policy interventions may not be needed for the emergence of foresight activities that exert a major influence on RTD agendas. It also suggests several context-dependent roles for public policy, among which government-driven foresight exercises and the catalysis of more narrowly focused activities are but two examples.     

Technology foresight for a vision of energy sector development in Poland till 2030. Delphi survey as an element of technology foresighting

The security of energy supply at national level is one of the most fundamental missions of every government. This task becomes especially vital in view of the current situation on global energy markets. The planning of technological development in the energy and fuel sectors is a relevant element of energy security strategies. This in turn leads to a more rational and efficient energy use in the future. Technology foresight, which emerged as a proven instrument of technology policy during the 1950s, becomes nowadays one of the essential tools for the creation of the future technological development worldwide. A project entitled: “The Scenarios of Technological Development of Fuel and Energy Sector for National Energy Security” was the first foresight project in the field of energy technologies and at the same time the first technology foresight activity in Poland. This project was being carried out in the period of 2006-2007 by a consortium of research and development institutes on the request of the Polish Ministry of Economy. The aim of the project was to indicate energy and fuel sector development directions in the time horizon up to 2030 and identify key energy technologies of strategic importance. As a result of the foresight activity, technology development scenarios in the energy and fuel sector in Poland as well as corresponding roadmaps for their implementation were formulated. The project results should be helpful in drafting national energy policies and they will indicate priority pathways of research and development (R&D) activities in the next years.The energy foresight project was based mainly on a Delphi method that is nowadays widely applied as a valuable foresight tool. This future-oriented intuitive method was engaged for the qualitative and quantitative assessment of probable developments in the future and for their time scale evaluation as well. In this article, the results of the conducted two-round Delphi survey were presented.     

The future of the future: Strategic foresight in Latin America

With few differences in timing, future studies in Latin America were initiated with a linear conception of reality. Orchestrated with techniques such as the Delphi, future studies were supported by mathematical principles of probability. Several countries have surpassed this stage while moving into strategic foresight. Strategic foresight analyzes the future as a multiple reality. In other words, it means thinking differently and not reading reality in a linear manner. It means accepting that there is not one future but several futures and that one question could have more than one answer.This change has demanded a shift in mentality. The presence of the disciplines in universities is of vital importance. For example, the Technological Institute of Monterrey (Mexico) and the Universidad Externado de Colombia (Bogota) offer foresight and strategy programs at the graduate level.This article describes how different individuals, groups, agencies and institutions in Latin America have emerged thanks to the support provided by the science and technology governmental agencies of each country. The author provides examples from different countries including Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Mexico. Currently, strategic foresight is slowly gaining recognition and acceptance as a compass for productive sectors and as a generator of competitiveness.However, despite the contributions of strategic foresight, Latin American countries, with the exception of some of the above-mentioned countries, have struggled to take off into the future. The role of strategic foresight can become the driving force behind this awakening, if the challenge of linking global trends with local contextualization through scenarios is accepted.     

Current Foresight Activities inCentral Europe

During the early 1990s, technology foresight has become much more widespread. First pioneered in the United States and later in Japan, it has now spread to continental Europe. One of the first engagements in modern national foresight occurred in the Netherlands. The task is to identify the areas of strategic research and the emerging generic technologies likely to yield the greatest socio-economic benefits. The decentralized foresight approaches are less holistic than elsewhere and are concerned with selected areas. In Germany, parallel approaches have been adopted for looking systematically into the longer-term future of science, technology, the economy, and society. In an era characterized by ever fiercer global economic competition, and with the burden of unifying two different science systems and over-stretched public expenditure budgets, the German governments on federal and state levels and indeed the public are coming to expect more direct economic and social benefits from science in return to their investment. Decentralized types of foresight are also observed in Austria, whereas in Hungary the first attempts to arrive at a foresight program seem to be modelled after British experiences.