Articles

Two futures: EU-Russia relations in the context of Ukraine.

The enduring crisis in Ukraine presents the European Union (EU) with a conundrum. Should it strengthen its economic and energy ties despite Russia’s growing assertiveness in the hope to solidify its medium ter...

Authors: Samuel R. Schubert, Johannes Pollak and Elina Brutschin

Democratization and elitism in the EU: two opposing trends (Guest-Editor’s introduction to the topical collection on “The Future of Europe”)

Europe has been facing a multi-dimensional crisis since 2008 with a strong impact on the quality of democracy in the EU and its member states. The continuous loss of citizens’ support threatens the very existe...

Authors: Markus Pausch

Foresight in support of European research and innovation policies: The European Commission is preparing the funding of grand societal challenges

A foresight hub within the Directorate General Research and Innovation (DG RTD) of the European Commission will support the decision-making procedures of the EU Horizon 2020 research, technology, and innovatio...

Authors: Jean-Claude Burgelman, Jarka Chloupková and Werner Wobbe

Neglected futures. Considering overlooked poverty in Europe

With poverty reduction being one of the five targets of the EU 2020 process, poverty is currently high on the agenda for the European Union and the 27 Member States. The applied methodology of measuring povert...

Authors: Helmut P. Gaisbauer and Clemens Sedmak

The future of counter-terrorism in Europe. The need to be lost in the correct direction

Terrorism is a clear context of rapid change, greater complexity and genuine uncertainties. A review of the events that have been going on in Europe shows a great evolution of the threat and the continuous eme...

Authors: José María Blanco Navarro and Jéssica Cohen Villaverde

Time out of mind? Picturing presence in future research

It is above all sociology and media theory which to an increasing extent are providing impulses for redefining the modern semantics of the concept of time. At the focus of attention here is the explication of ...

Authors: Friederike Müller-Friemauth and Eckard Minx

Intimate futures: bringing the body into futures work

It is argued in this paper that the intimate nature of language, as well as the intimacy of the senses, form important elements in the theory and practice of futures. Such elements tend to be sidelined as futu...

Authors: Marcus Bussey

Regional cosmopolitanism: the EU in search of its legitimation

What could be the legitimation basis of the European Union (EU)? This article questions the idea of two constitution-making subjects in the EU and claim there is and can only be one constituting subject even i...

Authors: Erik O. Eriksen

Transformation in transportation?

The world of transportation is changing. Due to increasing mobility demand, challenges like financing, dealing with emissions and volatile oil prices are accentuated. Decision-makers in the areas of policy and...

Authors: Merja Hoppe, Andreas Christ, Alberto Castro, Martin Winter and Tiina-Maria Seppänen

Is the post-human a post-woman? Cyborgs, robots, artificial intelligence and the futures of gender: a case study

This study aims to shed light on the debate about the futures of gender, by taking into account its significance in the current development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), cyborg technologies and robotics. It...

Authors: Francesca Ferrando

A participatory methodological framework for paving alternative local tourist development paths—the case of Sterea Ellada Region

The focus of the present paper is on the development of a participatory methodological framework, based on the future workshop participatory approach and participatory evaluation tools for planning the integra...

Authors: Maria Panagiotopoulou and Anastasia Stratigea

What corporations do with foresight

Foresight involves future-oriented awareness and planning, enabling businesses to respond quickly and effectively to future market threats and opportunities. However, knowledge about corporate foresight practi...

Authors: Mohamad S. Hammoud and Douglas P. Nash

Innovation in higher education; will there be a role for “the academe/university” in 2025?

This paper focuses on the innovation management (or lack of it perhaps) of Higher Education as a sector, highlighting examples of practice from industry and private providers that suggest the university needs ...

Authors: Eddie Blass and Peter Hayward

Design and application for a replicable foresight methodology bridging quantitative and qualitative expert data

Producing foresight knowledge frequently requires both evidence and creativity based expertise. This paper offers assessment of an electronic expert Group Support System (named «E-lab») facilitating efficient ...

Authors: Jan Erik Karlsen

European packaging industry foresight study—identifying global drivers and driven packaging industry implications of the global megatrends

The purpose of the research is to provide a common multi-client platform as a base for further applied foresight work in the packaging sector. It aims to be a reference for a future-oriented strategic dialogue...

Authors: Carl Olsmats and Jari Kaivo-oja

Controversial futures—discourse analysis on utilizing the “fracking” technology in Germany

There is an ongoing controversy in many European countries about the use of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as “fracking”, to extract shale gas. This article argues that the political regulation is strong...

Authors: Mira Schirrmeister

Will the real security foresight expert please stand up?

In its critical comparative overview of foresight methods and how they are used by different futures institutes in Europe, North America, and their partners, the text argues that while many futures institutes ...

Authors: Sarah Lohmann and Tim Tepel

Leadership in the sixth wave—excursions into the new paradigm of the Kondratieff cycle 2010–2050

The paper investigates the concept of leadership and its significance to businesses, societies and individuals in the next 40 years. The underlying framework in the paper is the theory of socio-economic change...

Authors: Markku Wilenius

Trust in the education system – thoughts on a fragile bridge into the future

This article discusses trust and its evident crisis with a particular focus on the education system (1). Subsequently, the function of trust in the complex knowledge-based society is highlighted (2). Using imp...

Authors: Inka Bormann and René John

Re-Assessing resource dependency and criticality. Linking future food and water stress with global resource supply vulnerabilities for foresight analysis

While strategic studies on natural resources usually focus on the criticality of certain single materials, our paper starts from the inter-linkages between and among resources (called “the resource nexus”). It ex...

Authors: Raimund Bleischwitz, Corey M. Johnson and Michael G. Dozler

The rise and promise of participatory foresight

Historically, the capability of predicting the future has always been perceived as a matter of certain inequalities, reflecting the initiation in or access to significant knowledge with regard to the future. T...

Authors: Blagovesta Nikolova

Irritation expertise

The contribution at hand puts forward the notion of “irritation expertise”: knowing how to push others into a direction not chosen voluntarily. This kind of knowledge, I will argue, is of particular importance...

Authors: Marc Mölders

Modes of orientation provided by futures studies: making sense of diversity and divergence

Debates about the future are an essential medium of modern societies’ self-understanding and governance. In this context, future studies and reflections are frequently advising decision-making processes. But t...

Authors: Armin Grunwald

Steering the future. The emergence of “Western” futures research and its production of expertise, 1950s to early 1970s

This article deals with the emergence of Futures Research after 1945 and its production of future expertise. The field of futures research (or futures studies/futurology) was conceptualised in a process of circul...

Authors: Elke Seefried

Scenario development without probabilities — focusing on the most important scenario

Within foresight management in general and scenario development in particular, the question is often asked: “For what scenario do I have to be prepared?” Since there are manifold approaches of scenario techniq...

Authors: Volker Grienitz, Michael Hausicke and André-Marcel Schmidt

A scientific enquiry into the future

Thinking about the future in a scientific manner is often characterised by an illusion of knowledge, leading to precarious one-sidedness and false conclusions. The reasons for this are misinterpretations of co...

Authors: Johannes Gabriel

Evaluation of technology foresight projects

Foresight is a well-known and widely used methodology for the creation of medium and long-term visions of technological, economic and social development. The need for evaluating foresight projects is unquestio...

Authors: Beata Poteralska and Anna Sacio-Szymańska

After the Arab Spring: an opportunity for scenarios

Since the start of the Arab Spring, the Middle East has been the scene of conflict that resonates far beyond its borders. This paper will argue that the upheavals in the Middle East cry out for a long view and...

Authors: P. W. F. Van Notten

Social network analysis in innovation research: using a mixed methods approach to analyze social innovations

The importance of social networks for innovation diffusion and processes of social change is widely recognized in many areas of practice and scientific disciplines. Social networks have the potential to influe...

Authors: Nina Kolleck

Foresighting addiction and lifestyles in Europe 2030+

The paper links to the EU funded project titled «Addictions and lifestyles in contemporary Europe – reframing addictions project», acronym: ALICE RAP. The project invited 17 European and three international dr...

Authors: Jan Erik Karlsen, Antoni Gual and Peter Anderson

A new monitoring process of future topics for innovation and technological analysis: informing Germanys’ innovation policy

Technology assessment (TA) is defined as problem-oriented transdisciplinary research that aims at working out solutions for societal problems. It provides advice to those in politics, science and wider society...

Authors: Nora Weinberger, Michael Decker, Torsten Fleischer and Jens Schippl

Migrant economies as new arenas to rethink policies and territorial development

The paper is based on an on-going empirical PhD project (Free University of Bolzano, Italy) and deals with the action framework of migrant economies in the South Tyrol of Italy. Self-organization among migrant...

Authors: Claudia Lintner

Social media analytics for future oriented policy making

Research indicates that evidence-based policy making is most successful when public administrators refer to diversified information portfolios. With the rising prominence of social media in the last decade, th...

Authors: Verena Grubmüller, Katharina Götsch and Bernhard Krieger

Limits to prediction: Europeanizing technology in an expert forum

EU expert institutions delivering policy advice about the promise of emerging technologies, help frame the issues that technologies might address. Their assumptions about European contexts for technology futur...

Authors: Mads Dahl Gjefsen

Scenarios for the future of the European process industry - the case of the chemical industry

Will the European manufacturing industry survive in the long term? This question has been discussed for decades. The issue is particularly controversial for the chemical industry with its energy-intensive prod...

Authors: Inga-Lena Darkow and Heiko A. von der Gracht

Part-time work: Atypical? Precarious? Normal?

There is no consensus among scholars about whether part-time work is an alerting signal of an on-going fragmentation of the labour market and of the rise in atypical working arrangements or whether it should b...

Authors: Tobias Hinterseer

Futures, communication and social innovation: using participatory foresight and social media platforms as tools for evaluating images of the future among young people

As many futurists have argued, images of the future have a crucial role to play in societal development. At an individual level, the understanding of people’s hopes, fears and expectations becomes important no...

Authors: Mario Guillo

Participatory futures research. Research or practice consulting?

This article combines futures research with participatory practice research, whose methodical approaches such as “community participation”, “community-based participatory research” and “participatory action re...

Authors: Reinhold Popp

Smurfs, cyborgs and changelings: prospects of human enhancement retrospected

This article stems from the impression of being condemned to late and moralizing reactions in regard to advances in the life sciences. We suggest a return to a speculative and theoretical approach in posing th...

Authors: Predrag Krstić and Srđan Prodanović

Foresight 2.0 - Definition, overview & evaluation

This paper contains a definition of Foresight 2.0 and summarizes the status quo of current methodological approaches in the field. It offers a categorization of individual applications by their technical featu...

Authors: Jörg Schatzmann, René Schäfer and Frederik Eichelbaum

Don’t blame the economists. It is an inverse problem!

The seriousness of the current crisis urgently demands new economic thinking that breaks the austerity vs. deficit spending circle in economic policy. The core tenet of the paper is that the most important proble...

Authors: Jaime Gomez-Ramirez

New man in utopian and transhumanist perspective

The title assumes that there is a difference between political Utopia and the transhumanist techno-vision. But if one follows recent publications that promise a renaissance of utopia, the transhumanist 21st ce...

Authors: Richard Saage

Futures Clinique—method for promoting futures learning and provoking radical futures

This paper introduces, illustrates and evaluates the concept of Futures Clinique, which is a participatory and exploratory futures workshop and a collective futures research method to tackle uncertainties, ide...

Authors: Sirkka Heinonen and Juho Ruotsalainen

Scenarios for selected maritime economic functions

This paper discusses the use of scenarios in the ‘Blue Growth’ project, which was aimed at elaborating the maritime dimension of the Europe 2020 strategy, with a 15-year time horizon (2025/2030). Scenarios wer...

Authors: H. A. Wolters, J. Gille, J. M. de Vet and R. J. Molemaker

Scenarios to explore the futures of the emerging technology of organic and large area electronics

Emerging technologies pose challenges for futures research because of their uncertainties combined with promises. Actors are anticipating and acting strategically. Sociotechnical scenarios building on endogeno...

Authors: Alireza Parandian and Arie Rip

Requirements for innovation policy in emerging high-tech industries

Innovation policy can never be fully technology-neutral and policies often align to support incumbent technological regimes obstructing the development of new industries. In this paper, two fields are analyzed...

Authors: Matti Pihlajamaa, Anne Patana, Kirsi Polvinen and Laura Kanto

Editorial

Authors: Christine Ahrend, Daniel Barben, Gerhard de Haan, Erik F. Øverland, Reinhold Popp, Ulrich Reinhardt and Doris Urbanek