Building FTA Capacities for systemic and structural Transformations: New FTA Systems for Anticipatory Action in a fast-changing World

Tranformations associated with the increased incidence of crises and other disruptive events including scientific discovery in recent years require new kind of future-oriented technology analysis (FTA). These transformations are driving governments and businesses to shift FTA activities from individual large-scale foresight programmes and projects, to invest in developing in-house competencies for coping with sudden change. The reasons for this shift from projects and programmes to institutionalised forms of FTA are manifold. On the one hand, a tighter embedding of FTA in support of decision making is needed in the context of a fast-changing, turbulent and complex environment. This is rendering the interpretation of contextual developments very difficult and challenging. There are also internal drivers for the emergence of novel forms of future intelligence which are linked to the need to achieve coordinated and coherent decisions within and across organisations. As a consequence, there is a growing need for the capacity to anticipate change to be centrally embedded in policy and decision making, and to achieve this embedding quickly and strategically. While the trend towards institutionalisation of FTA may appear obvious, it is important to understand the advantages and disadvantages of different organisational models for addressing FTA. The implementation of individual FTA projects or programmes of a limited duration and with targeted objectives provides an alternative model to the dedicated in-house FTA units, which can provide continuous input to their embedding or mother organisations. Different combinations of elements of these ideal-type models are possible including (international) FTA networks as informal but nevertheless stable settings which can bundle or coordinate resources and competencies. These models are often complementary in many respects. Service providers as well as FTA institutions need to be able to draw on FTA networks for different purposes, and the boundaries between service provision and institutionalised forms of FTA are blurring. The balance between these three forms of FTA activities (i.e. external FTA services, institutionalisation of FTA, and FTA networks) in empirical terms requires further investigation, in order to understand how different combinations of activities in effect operate in their respective decision making context. Ultimately, the appropriate model of FTA will strongly depend on the wider institutional and organisational environment in which FTA is embedded, be it in the private or the public sector. Paper for the Fourth International Seville Conference on Future-Oriented Technology Analysis (FTA) FTA and Grand Societal Challenges - Shaping and Driving Structural and Systemic Transformations SEVILLE, 12-13 MAY 2011 THEME 2: BUILDING FTA CAPACITIES FOR SYSTEMIC AND STRUCTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS - 2 - Against this background, it is important to improve our understanding of how far institutionalised FTA can form part of the solution for building capacity to handle disruptions. Many sorts of combinations of elements from different organisational models are needed to enable learning, experimentation and capability development appropriate for the wider decision making context in which FTA is embedded. This paper aims at exploring the extent to which FTA can provide enhanced support to decision making through innovative/customised organisational models for capacity building, generation and assessment of future developments, and corresponding abilities to transform organisations, thus enabling them to anticipate and address identified challenges and emerging weak signals. Tranformations associated with the increased incidence of crises and other disruptive events including scientific discovery in recent years require new kind of future-oriented technology analysis (FTA). These transformations are driving governments and businesses to shift FTA activities from individual large-scale foresight programmes and projects, to invest in developing in-house competencies for coping with sudden change. The reasons for this shift from projects and programmes to institutionalised forms of FTA are manifold. On the one hand, a tighter embedding of FTA in support of decision making is needed in the context of a fast-changing, turbulent and complex environment. This is rendering the interpretation of contextual developments very difficult and challenging. There are also internal drivers for the emergence of novel forms of future intelligence which are linked to the need to achieve coordinated and coherent decisions within and across organisations. As a consequence, there is a growing need for the capacity to anticipate change to be centrally embedded in policy and decision making, and to achieve this embedding quickly and strategically. Against this background, it is important to improve our understanding of how far institutionalised FTA can form part of the solution for building capacity to handle disruptions. Many sorts of combinations of elements from different organisational models are needed to enable learning, experimentation and capability development appropriate for the wider decision making context in which FTA is embedded. This paper aims at exploring the extent to which FTA can provide enhanced support to decision making through innovative/customised organisational models for capacity building, generation and assessment of future developments, and corresponding abilities to transform organisations, thus enabling them to anticipate and address identified challenges and emerging weak signals.