Foresight for Dynamic Organisations in Unstable Environments: A Search for New Frameworks

Foresight has an especially important role in times of transition and trouble. In times of turbulence foresight arises as a tool for intellectual freedom and enhanced strategic leverage. But foresight itself is always in a continuing process of innovation as it is not detached from the changing environment that engulfs organisations. Taking stock from innovative developments in foresight methodologies and implementation experiences is relevant as new experiments have rapidly accumulated in this new century. Looking ahead calls for a review of new perspectives and recent practice on foresight methodology and on how foresight is embedded in organisations.

This book brings together a sample of real-world cases and of conceptual proposals bridging between practitioners and researchers in the field of futures research. Such an ambition is an increasingly difficult balancing act as the gap between the needs of organisational leaders and the incentives of academics becomes an ever widening gulf due to increasingly specialised and self-absorbed agendas. To further this book’s goals we had the opportunity to assemble an international team of authors coming from a variety of backgrounds to provide their first-hand view from the frontier of new foresight empirical work and theoretical reflection.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Technology Analysis and Strategic Management.

Sandro Mendonça is a lecturer at the Department of Economics, ISCTE – Lisbon University Institute. His work has been published in a wide range of journals including Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, Long Range Planning, Technology Analysis and Strategic Change, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Futures and Journal of Economic Issues. He is member of the executive board of Obercom (the Portuguese media watch) and member of the executive committee of EconTel (Telecommunications Economics COST Network). He is a consultant on matters of corporate innovation strategy and intellectual property public policy.

Bartolomeo Sapio received his Doctor Laurea Degree in Electronic Engineering summa cum laude at the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, and is currently a researcher with Fondazione Ugo Bordoni. He has carried out methodological research in the field of scenario analysis, developing the original methods WISE, SEARCH and GIMMICKS, and applying them to multimedia, broadband networks, the Internet, mobile services and the convergence between fixed and mobile networks. He is currently chairman of COST (COoperation in the field of Scientific and Technical research).