***THIS GUIDE IS CURRENTLY BEING UPDATED***
Future oriented thinking is vital for any forward planning or policy activity to be able to meet future challenges proactively. Foresight enhances such thinking by gathering anticipatory intelligence from a wide range of knowledge sources in a systematic way and linking it to today’s decision making.
What is Foresight?
Foresight is a systematic, participatory, future-intelligence-gathering and medium-to-long-term vision-building process aimed at present-day decisions and mobilising joint actions. Research and innovation policies are based on (implicit or explicit) visions of the future of science, technology and society [More].
Why this guide?
The guide is designed to help different foresight users understand, participate and practice foresight.
Policy makers: the guide shows the impacts of foresight and how to attain them, providing examples from real cases.
Practitioners: the guide takes stock of the foresight approaches, offering opportunities to share experiences and give feedback.
Beginners: the guide provides a training tool organised in four modules, which explain what foresight is, why it is important and how to conduct a whole excercise and how to select appropriate methods.
This foresight guide is an updated and streamlined version of the FOR-LEARN, a 6th Framework Programme project of the European Commission developed by JRC-IPTS with the support of the Directorate General for Research, from January 2005 to May 2008.
Other educational sites
EFP maintains a list of other educational sites.