According to UNIDO, Technology Foresight “provides inputs for the formulation of technology policies and strategies that guide the development of the technological infrastructure” [12]. Associated methods take a technology-centric view that focusses on predicting the most likely technological developments in the mid-term future. They can be augmented by Strategic Foresight methods. Strategic Foresight centres on the future from the perspectives of a specific group, community, firm, government or society. The emphasis is not on technology push or pull per se, but on the challenge of developing and using different types of futures knowledge to intervene in puzzling and potentially turbulent situations that are characterised by social ambiguity and systems complexity.
The aim is to test and/or develop strategic options that enhance the resilience of a specified socio-technological system. Strategic Foresight methods engage a diversity of disciplinary- and situated-perspectives and create a safe space to reveal, test and constructively contest assumptions and enable consideration of less familiar future possibilities. The aim is not prediction but better preparedness.
In recent years at the OECD, four different Strategic Foresight methodologies have been used to explore, navigate, and prepare for the shift in the future of work. The “what for” or “so what” of each method is described in the following four sections.
OECD meta-scanning: mapping the contours of the next production revolution
To prepare for unpredictable and potentially disruptive change, it is necessary to look beyond the continuation of statistically strong trends and identify trend bends and breaks, the start of new trends that are already emerging in the present. This is enabled through scanning the horizon, that is, looking beyond the usual timeframe of decision-making and beyond the extrapolation of today’s trends that are relevant when using a strategic frame of full employment and paid jobs.
In 2014, the OECD Strategic Foresight unit piloted a globally, wide and deep horizon scan of multiple sources of data (a meta-scan) to help frame and inform a new strategic and horizontal work programme on the Next Production Revolution. The meta-scan inputs were three-fold: (1) Targeted search for recently published (within 5 years) Foresight reports by member and partner governments; (2) An extensive search of academic databases; (3) An open scan of internet sources and social media.
The targeted search revealed the globally common and different national emphasis that is being placed on emerging technologies. For example, robotics, nano- and biotechnology dominate literature about technologies, accounting for 38 %, 32 %, and 25 %, respectively, of articles. One quarter of all results originated from the United States, with China accounting for 11 %. Other leading countries (in order) were Japan, Germany, the UK, South Korea, France, Italy, India, and Canada. More articles about the Internet of Things, however, came from China than from anywhere else, with the USA leading on the other three technologies.
The open scan was produced in collaboration with the firm Polecat, which used its proprietary platform (Meaning Mine), which tracks millions of sources of unstructured data each day, including online national and local news, blogs, forums, trade publications, consumer reviews, press wires as well as corporate, government and academic publications from over 180 countries. The open scan included all online and social media in English over 90 days and covered Big Data, Internet of Things, 3D printing, nanotech, robotics and industrial biotechnology.
The headline results were as follows:
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Healthcare impacts dominate online and social media, followed by robotics and jobs.
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Online media coverage of all technologies was more positive than social media.
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Environmental impacts tend to be less visible, save for industrial biotechnology.
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Corporate involvement is cross-sectoral: aeronautics, automobiles, banking, consumer goods, crop science, ICT, lifestyle, oil and gas, and pharmaceuticals.
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The significance of these technologies and the perception of benefits and threats vary on a regional basis.
Combining the targeted search and scan elements and using data mining of the results of both enables policymakers to better avoid the trap of technological determinism and to attend to the social pull factors of new technology developments. In the pilot meta-scan the combination of technological push and social pull factors was concentrated in five challenge themes (Fig. 1)
By looking beyond individual national perspectives and across multiple policy domains, the meta-scan directs attention to new themes and global connections that are relevant in preparing societies for the shift in the future of work. Horizon scanning can also be facilitated by using a megatrends framework that helps facilitate shared and faster sense-making of new and different stories, signals, and novel developments.
OECD megatrends analysis
Megatrends are not single trends but an analysis of the pattern shifts that will result from the interplay of multiple trends. OECD megatrends analysis is used to set the scene for high-level policy meetings. An OECD megatrends analysis enables a shared view of the shifting global strategic landscape and can be used to support interactive and generative policy dialogues on a wide range of existing and emerging challenges.
The OECD megatrends framework was established in 2012 and is organised around four broad categories, namely People, Planet, Productivity and Polity. A fifth cross-cutting theme – Progress – can be added if horizon scanning involves attention to new and different narratives of progress and an analysis of underlying myths. These broad categories act as lenses that focus on different parts of the vast future landscape in order to enable new insights about interacting trends. Each category also operates as a bridge that links synthesis across policy silos and different national perspectives. For example, demographic ageing is an established megatrend in many OECD countries. By 2050, the number of people aged 65 years and older will have tripled. Meanwhile the percentage of the population aged 16 years and under is shrinking. Demographic ageing has emerged from a combination of improvements in health, welfare and work. It carries significant implications for the future of work – an ageing workforce, the sustainability of pensions, etc.
However, a demographic shift is not the only People-category related megatrend that needs to be considered, especially in facilitating global economic cooperation and development. In addition to demographic ageing in OECD countries and China, the OECD People megatrend lens identifies other people-related pattern shifts:
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Youth bulges are emerging in many non-OECD countries, i.e. the majority of the population aged less than 16 years can be found in some of the fastest growing populations, e.g., Indonesia, and, Nigeria.
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Rapid urbanisation in many emerging economies, contrasts with peaking of urban populations in cities in some OECD countries. By 2020, most of the world’s top 20 megacities will be located in non-OECD countries, and there will be 500 new mid-sized cities (1 million-plus inhabitants) in China.
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Increasing pressure for and new patterns of migration – globalisation has reduced income inequality between countries yet even modest wage differentials drive economic migration. Unprecedented waves of people-movement are occurring in different world regions – within Asia-Pacific, between Central and North America, between the Middle East and Europe. More lone children and families are forced to relocate due to war, extended conflict and food- and water-related environmental crisis (famine, flooding).
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Connectedness – the rapid increase in the use of social media as evident in the widespread use of Facebook, Twitter, etc. More people in Africa now have a mobile phone than access to electrical grids. Even so, four billion people worldwide are not yet online.
In effect, the People lens redirects attention from the focus on ageing societies that has characterised international policy discussions on the future of work in the past, to addressing the new phenomenon of more globally connected and demographically diverse societies.
Similarly, the OECD Productivity lens encourages attention to new signals of change relating to developments in education, skills and technology (digital and other). For example:
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In recent years, there has been an intensified polarisation of today’s workforce between highly-skilled, well-paid jobs and lower-paid, low-skilled ones even as the share of the low-educated has been contracting across all major occupational groups [12].
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Technology developments that augment human labour and cognitive skills and create new types of work, e.g., a “micro-facturing revolution” enabled by 3D printing, machine-machine learning, and the development of generalised artificial intelligence.
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The rise of the shared (or peer-to-peer) economy enables individuals to leverage their skills and assets (e.g., cars). As a result, there are new opportunities for self-generated work including for women and youth, at least for those with some assets.
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Driverless cars, drones delivering goods, and algorithms replacing accountants, bank staff, and legal assistants have led some to suggest that automation will result in a net loss of more than 5.1 million jobs across 15 major advanced economies [13].
Looking slightly further forward, the digital revolution is accelerating a pattern of technological convergence. Digitalisation is not happening in isolation but in interaction with other technology fields (nanotech, biotech, ICT, genetics, robotics, and artificial intelligence). This is creating a new reality - decentralised, pervasive, embedded and active – “living” – technologies, and the prospect of an Internet of Everything, machine-machine learning and robotic innovation. The nature and timing of the next productivity revolution are uncertain and dependent on assumptions about the speed and inevitability of the transition from the industrial to digital knowledge economy.
The future of work is also shaped by developments in finance, business and trade. For example:
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The long-term costs of capital and continuation of zero and low interest rates;
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The uneven uptake of new technologies by firms and the staff-light business models of the new internet business giants;
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In addition to the reduction in world trade since 2008, there is a shift in what is being traded from manufactured products to intermediaries (e.g., software) and services. Could the current slow progress in international trade rounds, which are focussed on the liberalisation of services, soon be outpaced by digital disruption of what will be traded in future? If so, where and by whom?
Megatrends crashing – navigating demographic diversity and new productivity dividends
In addition to considering the implications of developments within each megatrends category for the future of work, new threats and opportunities can be anticipated by combining megatrend categories - e.g., People and Productivity. This enables, in turn, different global perspectives concerning the shift in the future of work to be discovered and considered and avoids the trap of imposing a “one size fits all” global blueprint. For example, emerging economies are rethinking demographic dividends in the context of digital divides, and advanced industrialised economies are grappling with the digital dividend in the context of rapidly ageing societies.
Scenario planning – exploring alternative futures
OECD futures of livelihoods
In 2014, the OECD Development Centre in collaboration with The Rockefeller Foundation embarked on a scenario-based project called “Securing livelihoods for all: Foresight for action.” This initiative was motivated by two shared challenges:
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To develop inclusive economies that would enable the poorest and most vulnerable to access global opportunities.
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To create secure livelihoods that enable individuals, families and communities not just to survive but to thrive in the face of emerging threats.
The scenario planning framework was developed during a four-day workshop held at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Centre in August 2014, which gathered an expert group of entrepreneurs, scholars, policymakers and non-profit leaders to discuss the future of livelihoods. The workshop was co-organised by The Economist Intelligence Unit and the OECD Development Centre as part of The Rockefeller Foundation’s Visionaries Unbound series.
Four sketch scenarios emerged from workshop discussions, developed around two axes that represented key uncertainties in terms of the following questions: (1) “Will the future of livelihoods be determined by large-scale solutions? Or by solutions at the local level, especially cities?” (2) “Will the future of livelihoods be focused primarily on getting policies right? Or, by becoming more effective in the developing of individuals for a new work world?”
Nets – the financial economy
Jobless growth is accepted as a facet of late-stage capitalism, and policymakers look to social safety nets to assure livelihoods for all. There is increasing interest in radical redistribution policies – including restructuring of domestic tax systems to enable a shift from income to consumption and wealth taxes and piloting of new systems involving Basic Income Guarantees.
Pathways – the knowledge economy
The knowledge economy grows, so there are plenty of jobs – but they all require education and training. There’s a mismatch between jobs and education, which governments and cities struggle to correct. There is much more focus on re-training of older workers and helping young people get the necessary skills and guidance.
Portfolios – the experience economy
Young people are no longer interested in jobs so much as meaningful work, work-life cycle balance, and portfolio careers. Entrepreneurs sell their services, skills, and produce directly to global markets, on e-bay and through Alibaba. Dematerialisation accelerates in advanced industrial societies but with an increase in global tourism, due to the growing focus on an experience economy by global connected urban elites.
Green world – the green economy
Nations make large and serious commitments to building low carbon and digital economy infrastructures – creating jobs at all levels in a way similar to the rebuilding efforts after World War II that made formerly devastated countries (Japan, Germany) among the most prosperous.
The four scenarios offer different possible futures from the one currently being forecast. They do not depend on miracles of global governance. But they do depend on a shift in emphasis by policymakers from an exclusive focus on GDP growth to one that also takes into account the multidimensional well being of people. These four sketch scenarios continued to be developed through an iterative process of storytelling, systems thinking, and quantitative analysis involving engagement with wider OECD experts. The final set of five scenarios explicitly reflected financial and environmental shocks and were used by policy analysts to identify policy implications at the global, national, and local level for the future of livelihoods under very different circumstances [14].
OECD ministerial committee meeting: futures of investments and jobs
Another example of using a scenario-based Foresight intervention to anticipate the shift in the future of work centres on the preparation for an informal and interactive scenario-based policy discussion session about the direction of national policies aimed at unlocking investment for sustainable growth and jobs, which took place during the first lunch of the OECD’s annual Ministerial Council Meeting in June 2015. Three global archetype scenarios were identified by the OECD secretariat based on an expansive review of global scenarios published by governments and businesses. These were further developed through engagement with national Foresight experts and fine-tuned via an extensive prototyping of the interactive discussion process involving OECD ambassadors and delegation staff.
The three global archetype scenarios present alternative future policy contexts that might happen to OECD member countries and partners, independently of what they – or the OECD as an organisation - think should happen.
A brief description of each of these three archetype scenarios is presented in the remainder of this section together with the implications of each for the future of work.
Quick fixes
In Quick Fixes, policymakers scramble to balance the need for more flexible labour markets with the need to avoid more extreme income and wealth inequalities. Jobless growth is increasingly accepted as a facet of late-stage capitalism, and policymakers look to radical redistribution mechanism, including high wealth taxation to enable investment in livelihoods for all. In a world of digitally empowered but increasingly fragmented and polarised societies, implementation of new policy experiments centred in the concept of “universal basic income” is delayed until after 2025. Many young people in mature industrial economies are no longer interested in lifelong jobs so much as meaningful work, work-life cycle balance, and portfolio careers. As more and more entrepreneurs sell their commodities online from developing, emerging and advanced economies, policy makers are faced with a new challenge that not everyone wants or can be an entrepreneur. By 2030 two billion are employed, two billion are self-employed, one billion are in the informal economy, one billion are unemployed or in transition, and two-and-a-half billion people are not part of the workforce (children, retirees, people with disabilities).
Multipolar
In Multipolar, the opportunities of low interest rates and more diverse sources of private credit enables government-directed investment to be targeted at job creation in new “sunrise industries” that meet shifting social needs and are acceptable from the perspective of ethics and cultural values. Nations make large and serious commitments to building the new ‘clicks-and-bricks’ infrastructure that is needed to support new innovation ecosystems, at regional and national scale. This creates jobs at all levels in a way similar to the rebuilding efforts after World War II that made formerly devastated countries (Japan, Germany) among the most prosperous. As national economies start to grow again, there are plenty of jobs – and they all require broader skills. Cognitive enhancements and machine-augmentation of humans are carefully regulated to avoid new social gaps and divides. There is growing conviction that there are more jobs available than there are skilled people to fill them. Education systems rapidly transform to meet the challenges of learning for life and lifelong learning.
City power
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Globally connected cities compete with one another to attract the best talent and the most successful corporations from around the world. More dynamic cooperation between cities, businesses and governments enables new solutions to emerging global challenges such as climate change adaptation, robotic innovation, cyber-security, and increasing migration.
In City Power, new technologies stimulate more self-generated work opportunities, and 3D-printing results in a re-shoring of work. As successful cities increasingly attract global investment in smarter, integrated and urban-scale food-water-energy systems, livelihood policies are developed at the city level and aligned with new national frameworks that support managed migration, global cyber security and mega-regional trade systems. Companies outsource work in discrete projects, so workers may sometimes be working at a couple of projects followed by a period during which they have no employment. In an era of robotic innovation, monopolies of knowledge are a continuous problem as fewer companies register patents. National governments learn to regulate new types of self-generated work, to provide incentives for the use of private data for public goods and to develop new frameworks for measuring contributions to society beyond income generation.
These scenarios do not directly provide solutions but, as a set, helped to highlight new questions for discussion that are relevant to a more anticipatory global policy agenda on the future of work, for example:
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What new metrics of productivity are needed in a jobs-scarce economy?
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If the best opportunities for unlocking investment for sustainable growth occur at a regional or city level, what new global governance arrangements will be needed?
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How can the global knowledge commons be safeguarded an era of private data and robotic innovation?
Visioning and back-casting - translating universal development into actionable policies
A new global vision of universal development in which no one is left behind has been agreed and is underpinned by the UN agenda on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Translating this vision into action is the task of national governments. Several OECD governments have started to review and align existing national development strategies or to create new ones that will enable them to meet and demonstrate that they are meeting their new international commitments.
Central to these efforts is a whole-of-government agenda that anticipates how the shift in the future of work is being shaped by the complex interplay of global and domestic factors and national policy choices. To support its members’ efforts, the OECD, in turn, has developed more integrated methodologies that combine conventional policy analysis, Strategic Foresight methods, and multidimensional measurement frameworks. These new integrated methodologies are not confined to OECD members but include the Multi-Dimensional Country Review process for use in developing countries.
An example of how progress on commitments to the new global vision of universal development manifests in implications for the national policy agenda on the future of work is provided by Slovenia. Slovenia is in the process of preparing the National Development Strategy 2030 in accordance with its Vision 2050. Both the vision and the strategy are being created with a focus on implementation of the UN Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development.
The Slovenia Vision 2050 was developed through a participatory Foresight process to ensure a whole-of-society vision and drew on range of initial analytical inputs about the domestic situation, outlook and shifting global context. To provide relevant inputs, the Slovenian government asked the OECD to produce an independent comprehensive assessment of the current situation, which included a comprehensive analysis of key domestic trends and comparative international performance. It was supplemented by an analysis of megatrends, global and regional scenarios, and disruptors.
The drafting of the final vision statement continued through several rounds of dialogue with key policy shapers and wider stakeholders in government, Parliament, businesses, and the wider society. The new national vision does not focus on the future of paid jobs per se, but describes a new inclusive value-creation system that can sustain peace and shared prosperity in the shift from an industrial to a knowledge-based society. The motivating nature of the vision generates new social energy and supports multiple strategic conversations within and between different key stakeholders in the government, Parliament, business and wider society that brings together issues of jobs, self-generated work, and challenges of pensions and immigration, in a way that supports a generational value shift in a highly educated society: a move away from a jobs-for-life culture to choices that enable more contributions to society and better work-life cycle balance.
For example, the vision recognizes the importance of enabling a transformation in education - a redesign of the system and curriculum - to enable skills for life for all of society rather than education for jobs per se. Skills for life, in turn, involve cognitive and non-cognitive elements and contribute to creative problem solving, entrepreneurship, and active citizenry. Furthermore, the vision opens up the space for a policy dialogue on labour market flexibility from the perspective of the worker rather than the employer.
What is becoming clear in moving from visioning to action is that navigating the shift in the future of work is a cross-cutting agenda, not limited to the ministry of education or social policies but benefitting from engagement of other ministries and policy domains.
Translating the vision into coherent policies that are linked to budget and performance cycles has also exposed the lack of whole-of-government capacity, which is common in the stove-piped silos of bureaucratic and hierarchically organised national governments. New mechanisms for horizontal cooperation are being progressed that use the Vision 2050 and Strategy 2030 as a safe space to cultivate the “people coherence” that is necessary for progressing a whole-of-society vision through a whole-of-government agenda that anticipates a fundamental shift in the future of work.