Background

Nordic Foresight Forum is a meeting place where Nordic  Foresight practitioners can exchange, learn and identify "good practices" for prioritising in science and technology.

All Nordic countries have some experience in using foresight, but they have used rather different approaches in doing so. Nordic Innovation Centre (NICe) has launched three foresight projects (on Hydrogen, Bio-medical sensors and ICT). This creates opportunities for mutual exchange, learning and identifying "good practices". One of the major objectives of NFF is to exchange experiences between these and forthcoming Foresight activities in the Nordic countries.

Although the Nordic countries differ in economic structure, there are significant areas of overlap where we have common interests, and to a large extent we share a common set of social values. This creates the potential for economies of scale and scope in carrying out foresight projects.

Nordic countries also have complementary elements in their national innovation systems (NIS) and the identification of complementary elements is a challenge to Nordic innovation policy as outlined in “Innovationsboken” from 2004 by Nordic Council of Ministers. NFF seeks to identify these complementary elements in order to facilitate collaboration between the Nordic countries.

Objectives

The objectives of NFF are:

• To create and operate a Nordic Foresight Forum for technology foresight practitioners and researchers
• To identify “best practices” in the Nordic countries for technology foresight and similar methodologies for prioritising in science and technology

Work Packages

The work to be carried out in NFF is summarized in five work packages:

WP 1. Nordic Foresight Forum: Secretariat and Meetings The objective of the Nordic Foresight Forum for practitioners and researchers is to facilitate the exchange of experience and learning.

WP 2. Mapping of Nordic Foresight Actors and an Analysis of Recent Nordic Foresight Activities. The objective is here an updated mapping of Nordic foresight actors and description of foresight activities in the Nordic countries including the two ongoing and one finalized foresight projects sponsored by NICe.

WP 3. Mapping of Nordic national research and innovation council system and analysis of the needs for foresight and similar strategic intelligence. It is the objective to describe national (and Nordic) research and innovation councils and similar system and organisations. Description and analysis of current use of foresight with the five national research and innovation council systems – and interaction between national actors and on the Nordic and the EU level.

WP 4. Identifying fields of science and technology for possible future Nordic (NICe) initiatives. The objective is to  identify systematic processes for ways of identifying possible future fields of technology and knowledge based on available Nordic and national information (Nordic Strengths and Weaknesses). This Wp will also identify good practises in matching future fields of technology to national preconditions: Current capabilities in science and technology, industry structure, socio-economic demand factors etc. Finally it will be discussed and analysed how different actors in the innovation system can implement results from foresight studies.

WP 5. Nordic Foresight Conference and final report: A Nordic foresight and “priority setting in research councils” conference will be arranged by Nordic Innovation Centre in 2006 where a report of Nordic foresight  activities will be presented.