One side effect of the increasing emphasis on maximizing the economic return on public investments in science and technology has been the growth of “foresight exercises” around the world. Pioneered by the Japanese government in the early 1970s, foresight has mushroomed in the 1990s. The basic idea is to identify the likely social, economic and market trends in all sectors of a nation’s economy over the coming 10-20 years, and then identify the developments in science and technology required to address future needs. The normal approach is to divide the economy into 15 or so sectors and set up a panel of experts from business, industry, government, universities and elsewhere to cover each one. These sectors are pretty similar across the globe: IT and electronics, materials, health and medicine, the environment, transport, agriculture and so on.
It is difficult to judge how successful any of the exercises have been, and it will be just as difficult to do so in the future. However, one important lesson has been learnt so far: foresight is not an end in itself and it is essential to make the results as widely known as possible. This is one of the themes to emerge from The Future in Focus: a Summary of National Foresight Programmes, a collection of short papers published by the UK Office of Science and Technology.
Japan is the one country where we can try to gauge the success of foresight. Since 1971 the Japanese government has published a major Technology Forecast Survey every five years or so. An analysis of the first survey has shown that it is easier to predict the future in some areas than in others. More than two-thirds of the predictions made about telecommunications and agriculture, forestry and fisheries were correct, whereas only one-quarter of those about energy and life sciences came true. However, many experts felt that it was more important to make management and policy-makers aware of gradually occurring trends in science and technology than it was to make exact predictions about the future. The creation of new contacts and networks was also seen as a useful spin-off from foresight.
A common problem is how to make the best use of the vast amount of information that is gathered. The results of a “Delphi” foresight survey carried out in Germany in 1993 were influential in setting public spending priorities, but further dissemination was limited. Greater emphasis will be placed on communicating the results of the second exercise, which was completed in March, to small- and medium-sized enterprises. Indeed public relations agencies have already been invited to tender for this work.
The situation in the UK is similar. The results of a major foresight programme were published in 1995, and by the start of 1997 over £350m of private and public sector funds had been committed to initiatives reflecting foresight priorities, although little of this was “new” money. However, programme officials admit that the findings of the survey were not used to their full potential. The UK is about to start on another round of foresight.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the US does not use foresight, although it does run similar exercises with varying degrees of success. The two-yearly Critical Technologies report, for example, is said to lack influence because the steering group that prepares it is dominated by academics. On the other hand, technology road maps prepared by US industry groups in areas such as semiconductors and optoelectronics have been more successful because they have focused on what a particular industry must do to survive and prosper in an era of increasing competition and change.
One result of foresight is that it will no longer be possible to rely on past glories (or anecdotes about Michael Faraday) when trying to argue that a particular line of research will eventually lead to applications. A major challenge is to relate the work of the panels, which focus on market sectors, to a nation’s research base that will largely be organized along completely different lines. For this reason physicists and the organizations that represent them would be well advised to exert as much influence as possible on the various foresight activities now underway, and to interpret and exploit the reports in the widest and most creative manner possible.
