TECHNOLOGY FORESIGHT SUMMIT - Unido

14 Technology Foresight Summit
correct and relevant information about their framework can take correct decisions
and actions.
The quality of decisions taken today depends largely on the correct
assessment of the future, because the effects of decisions will only become
evident in the future. For decision making in increasingly complex and
dynamic environments, scenarios are the most important instruments for
dealing with the future. Market and competition-related scenarios are of central
interest to companies, because they provide for decision making by focusing
directly on the investigation subject. The investigation of alternative
futures as a preparatory step for making decisions in a company has to deeply
consider the relationship of causes and effects within a market or sector.
Based on external scenarios, developed and understood as images and models
of the external world as framework for corporate activity, specific internal
or corporate scenarios will be developed, taking into account possible
measures and developments that may be shaped by the corporation itself.
Such scenarios reflect the specific corporate goals and are developed within
the external future framework, showing at the same time possibilities for
one’s actions.
Networking of Foresight Programmes
Gustavo Fahrenkrog, Head, Technology, Employment, Competitiveness
and Society Unit, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies—IPTS,
Spain
In the context of the work on EU Enlargement, the IPTS launched a project
to identify through prospective methods the main contemporary challenges
for accession countries and discuss their consequences for three policy areas:
Science/Technology, Competitiveness and Employment. The project has been
entitled “Enlargement Futures” and structured around four clusters of challenges
and opportunities in the next 10 years:
Economic transformation;
Technology, knowledge and learning;
Employment and societal change;
Sustainability, environment and natural resources.
The project has been aimed at contributing to a better understanding of the
various problems that European countries will face in the coming decades
and the ways in which they can be analysed. This will help develop the capacity
for prospective analysis, which is crucial for employment, research and
regional policy in the European Union. It includes experts from the accession
countries that work on the implications of the enlargement for the
achievement of the Lisbon process.