Future-Oriented Technology Analysis: Future Directions

As the chapters in this volume have demonstrated, FTA cannot be defined by a single methodology, nor by a single goal; indeed, it encompasses the tradition of a variety of schools of thought, each one embodying a stream of theory and practice referring more or less explicitly to an understanding of what is relevant and useful. The diversity of contexts of application leads understandably to a diversity of focus, methods and outcomes of FTA exercises. Nevertheless, on reviewing the different contributions from which this book is built, it appears that the term ‘FTA’ does refer to a number of common elements, beyond the differences of context of application and the variety of mode of expression linked to the various backgrounds among the authors. These deep-rooted common elements are the basis for a shared understanding of FTA, as follows:

• FTA is an agenda-setting process aimed at providing anticipatory intelligence as a basis for decision making. It is the set of activities dealing with statements about long term dynamics of technology in society, either to produce such statements or to perform criticism of existing ones. As a consequence, FTA processes initiate collective learning and vision building which impact the complex interplay of factors governing innovation trajectories.

• In FTA, technical change is considered a socially embedded driver, which is key for societal evolution, developing along a time axis, in the form of ‘trajectories’, hence the need for a longer term horizon of analysis and a broadening of the set of parameters to take into consideration. In this sense, longer term, systemic analysis constitutes a key characteristic of FTA, which explicitly deals with complex socio-technical systems and science-society relationships.

• FTA allows for the construction of common visions and produces issue-specific knowledge through a process of dialogue, creating joint learning spaces between users and producers of innovation, knowledge integration and a shared sense of commitment. In this sense, it is an infrastructure of distributed intelligence — enabling the system to better address future challenges.

• Not surprisingly, FTA has relevance in all human activities where there are collective stakes, as shown in the contributions to this book: it is used in industry, in higher education, in public policy in a variety of countries, both in the innovation field, but more generally regarding socio-economic development. Thus, different FTA exercises can have large differences in scope (geographic scale and time horizon), relationship to decision making, the extent of participation and even the purpose of the analysis.

• At the same time, however, all FTA processes share the following types of outputs: structured and validated information on longer term social and economic developments, identification of solutions to complex problem areas, and defined priority areas.

• They also share criteria for assessing the quality of the FTA processes:

  • Rigour, standing, interest and credibility of the conjectures made

  • Diversity of the actors participating in the debates and their effective access to the forum

  • Impacts in terms of learning effects

  • Impacts in terms of strategy formulation for action by the actors of the system

• Finally, the following criteria would seem to be important for assessing the impacts of FTA:

  • Credibility, depending on the internal validity and analytical rigour of the conjectures made

  • Quality of the conjectures, linked to their creativity and the extent to which they transcend existing beliefs and innovation patterns, i.e. the extent to which they are ‘disruptive’ and lead to learning effects

  • Social robustness, based on the fact that all viewpoints have been negotiated, both in framing the question and in gathering the evidence

  • Clarity of purpose, meaning that a clear linkage exists between the FTA process and the formal decision-making process

  • Legitimacy resulting from the existence of cooperative strategies for knowledge production