FUTURES ANALYSTS NETWORK NEWSETTER
JUNE 2007
Introduction
The May 2007 meeting of the FAN Club
The Big Event
took place at Chatham House and provide an opportunity for FAN Club members to discuss signals of change - emerging trends or developments spotted by network members - that seem deserving of greater attention.
The specific objectives of the meeting were to identify which signals might be important for the UK over the next 20 years and to consider how different stakeholders - government, business and citizens - might want to respond to them.
There were three main elements to the meeting:
- an online survey hosted by Fountain Park in advance of the meeting to identify and evaluate signals of change;
- a presentation at the meeting by Alister Wilson which set out some of the strong signals of change that government is currently aware of and suggested some emerging signals of growing importance; and
- A series of workshop discussions in which participants developed a 'priority list' of signals of change, drawing on the findings of the online exercise and the key messages coming from the presentation.
The outputs from these discussions will feed into OSI's briefing programme and provide indicators of trends that might be looked at in more detail in the next version of the Sigma Scan.
Sir David King spoke after lunch about how horizon scanning activities are contributing to policy thinking across government. We also heard from Victor van Rij (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences) and Luke Georghiou (PREST) about ForSociety's joint horizon scanning project - and from Professor Janet Finch about the Council for Science and Technology's Strategic Focus project.
The online survey
Fountain Park - a Finnish company whose Strategy Signals Toolset helps clients scan the business environment - managed an online survey to collect and evaluate members' initial thoughts on signals of change. In the first stage - collection - participants answered the question "What signals of potential change have you seen that could affect the UK over the next 20 years?"
In the second stage - evaluation - participants prioritised the signals according to importance (potential impact, the urgency with which they need to be addressed or the scale of the opportunity or challenge they present, for example).
Fountain Park noted that the results of the survey show that participants are mostly focussed on technology and social issues and that concerns about polarisation and division in society loom large. They also noted that participants are quite pessimistic about the future and encouraged us "to create positive self fulfilling prophecies!"
Presentation by Alister Wilson
Alister Wilson from Waverley Management Consultants gave a presentation that set out some of the strong signals of change that government is currently aware of and suggested some emerging signals of growing importance. The first part of the presentation drew out a number of themes that are appearing consistently in futures reports (such as PMSU's Strategic Priorities For The UK: The Policy Review, (Adobe PDF) HM Treasury's Long-term opportunities and challenges for the UK. (Adobe PDF) HSC's own report on key emerging technologies - (the "S&T Clusters") the Sigma and Delta scans and The Scottish Executive's Futures Project (Adbe PDF)). The presentation highlighted a number of themes around
- The UK's growing and diversifying population;
- Changes in participation in the workforce;
- Changes in family structures and households;
- The growing interdependence of states in the global economy;
Competitiveness; and
- Energy security.
In the second part of his presentation, Alister used the Seven Ages of Man soliloquoy from Shakespeare's As You Like It (read by Paul Brady from AKT Productions) to structure a presentation on emerging signals of change that he has identified while working with a range of clients across government.
The presentation explored, for example:
- The implications of trends in falling birth rates;
- How schools are using technology to change the learning experience;
- Possible impacts of new forms of social networking;
- Ways in which local leaders are emerging to tackle global problems; and
- The consequences of 'life begins at sixty'.
If you would like a copy of Alister's slides, please e-mail him.
Workshop discussions
The workshop discussions took place in small groups. Building on the findings from the online survey and the presentation of emerging signals, participants
- broke into 6 working groups of between 12 and 18 people;
- brainstormed/listed important signals of change and captured them on post it notes;
- clustered signals by theme;
- identified the dominant issues underlying each theme;
- identified associated predetermined elements and critical uncertainties; and
- explored the implications of the predetermined elements and critical uncertainties for the UK over the next 20 years.
18 broad themes emerged from the workshops, each with a range of associated challenges, opportunities and questions to be explored further:
| Theme | Questions |
|---|
| The social cost of unlimited consumption | What are the unintended consequences of the drive for economic growth and global competitiveness that are emerging? |
| New sources of authority | Do people and governments make better decisions if citizens are better skilled at accessing and using knowledge, at using judgement and in critical thinking skills and analytical skills? What factors really influence people's decisions - leaders, celebrities, education, and time? |
| Gene watch | Does increased knowledge about one's own genetic profile and future health affect lifestyle choices and behaviours? |
| Theme | Questions |
|---|
| Future focussed political processes | Should government decentralise futures thinking and link it to decentralised decision making? Is there any value in building the capacity of regional actors to do futures thinking? |
| Feast or famine | What are the economic and social impacts of shifting land use from food to fuel? |
| Building bridges | To what extent does positive media coverage build societal confidence? |
| The switch from real to virtual mobility | What are the limits to sustainable economic growth? |
| Technology offers | Is technology becoming a driver of social development and growth? What are the moral benefits of adopting new technology that drives social development? What is the role of the human being in the development of complex social networking systems? |
| Bringing up the kids | What is the impact of society's efforts at structuring childhood? |
| Social entrepreneurship in a consumer society | Does it matter if people see themselves as consumers rather than producers? |
| New definitions for old | Does building strong intergenerational links help to bridge generation gaps? Are 'retirement communities' of mutually supporting older workers/recently retired people valuable? |
| Trackability | Does anyone really notice or worry about being tracked any more? |
| Personalised holistic healthcare | Are switching costs from existing pharmaceutical research programmes to new targeted drugs prohibitive? Or will new producers emerge and disrupt the market? |
| The complex business of identity | What is the anthropology and sociology of online communities: how powerful are they? Do people behave differently and have different moral behaviour? |
| Wellbeing and happiness | Is it time to change the focus of policy away from economic indicators such as GDP growth and productivity towards more societal ones - such as well being and happiness? What happens when people are encouraged to look within themselves and their communities to find happiness - rather than focussing on material wealth? |
| Post peak global cohesion | Do we need a better understanding of the link between the economy and lifestyle choices? Should we model 'various shades of green' economies? |
| The adolescent brain | Are we are being unrealistic in trying to feminise males? What influence do violent games and virtual reality have on behaviour? |
| Schizophrenic self(ish) | What is the ground on which the debate on public services will be carried out in the future? |
Full details of the workshop discussions are in the report (Download the Big Event workshop report Adobe PDF 887kb).
Horizon scanning across government
Sir David King began his talk by emphasising the importance of thinking positively and looking for opportunities rather than threats. He cited the rapid development of China as an opportunity and also pointing out that seeing it that way is very different - and more beneficial - than the way other governments view it. He also pointed out that seeing China as an opportunity doesn't mean that we should simply start working with China without analysing the risks - but that we should develop an overall understanding of what is happening and look for the opportunities that are key to our own future development. Building this understanding across a range of important areas is one of the most important things that horizon scanning and foresight activities can do.
One of the main reasons that the Horizon Scanning Centre was set up was to build forward thinking capacity across government and beyond - and it has been delivering this purpose remarkably well over the last two years. Sir David spoke about the importance of drawing the right people into the FAN Club in order to keep this going - and of the importance of building up forward thinking capacity inside our organizations to ensure that forward thinking influences decision making at all levels. This is critical if the FAN Club is to be more than an interesting day out and it is essential that there are institutional infrastructures in place to build that capacity.
Sir David expressed the hope that these discussions quite simply help participants to think about something they haven't thought about before and to spot the out-of-the-box challenges that will suddenly happen and change what we work on.
All the indications are positive. The Delta and Sigma Scans are now being used to inform a wide range of discussions within and outside government and the networking and exchange of views that takes place at these meetings is excellent. The impact within government of the foresight and horizon scanning processes has already been significant and the FAN Club is an important vehicle for taking forward thinking from inside government to outside government and, through that interaction, enriching processes on both sides.
ForSociety: Joint Horizon Scanning
Victor van Rijs (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts & Sciences) and Luke Georghiou (PREST) spoke about ForSociety's joint horizon scanning project - a pilot exercise to increase co-operation between national foresight programmes across Europe. The project partners are the Horizon Scanning Centre (UK), COS Horizon Scan (the Netherlands), the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation and the Maltese Council for Science and Technology. PREST is providing project support. The pilot's objectives are to
- share collection and analyses of joint scan data to explore the added value for different policy levels;
- explore methodological improvement of (national) horizon scanning activities; and
- develop a proposal for further cooperation and joint activities.
The project team is currently preparing a report for partners which offers a comparison of horizon scanning data and processes. The report will in September this year and, if accepted, will lead to development of proposals to continue the project and widen co-operation.
Luke Georghiou presented some early findings from a comparison of national horizon scanning activities amongst partner organisations. His findings show that, although the approaches are generally similar, there are some differences in the extent to which consultation and creative foresighting are used. Luke also highlighted an unresolved tension in all processes - between scanning science to inform society and scanning society to inform science and left us with akey question to ponder: is horizon scanning a methodology in itself or a technique to be used within more broadly defined strategic intelligence activities?
Victor and Luke's slides can be downloaded here.
Council for Science and Technology: Strategic Focus
The Council for Science and Technology (CST) is currently developing advice for government on what would be the best four or five technology areas on which to focus its resources. CST have shortlisted 24 technologies and are about to go into a final prioritisation exercise in which they will be ranked against 6 criteria:
- Market size;
- UK technological competitiveness;
- UK capacity to deliver;
- Potential societal implications;
- risks; and
- Potential government intervention needed.
The final list of technologies will be presented to the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry in the summer.
More information on the project is available from Dr Peter Brooke (Council for Science and Technology, Bay 307 1 Victoria St London SW1H 0ETTel: 020 7215 6518).
Next meeting
The next meeting of the FAN Club will take place on 11 September 2007 at the Barbican Centre, London. The meeting will also involve CBI members and will provide an opportunity to explore how UK competitiveness and wealth creation might be achieved in different future scenarios.