The UK's Foresight programme was initiated in 1993 when the then Minister of Science, Mr William Waldegrave, published a White Paper entitled "Realising our Potential" (1). The main thrust of this White Paper was to see how the UK could obtain more from its investment in basic science and technology for the greater good of the population. Extensive analysis had been undertaken of the Japanese Foresight programme and the recommendation to set up a similar Foresight exercise in the UK was one of the main outcomes from the White Paper.
Consequently, in 1994 the first UK Foresight programme was announced with the avowed purpose of increasing the wealth creation of the UK and secondly to improve the quality of life of UK citizens. A more succinct way of expressing the former objective is to "improve competitive performance by bringing invention and innovation closer together". Initially this was seen by the general scientific community and industry as a government driven initiative which would have far reaching effects on research funding and other government actions.
The programme was to run for five years from 1994-1999 and core to the activity was the formation of 16 Foresight Technology Panels covering the majority of scientific and technological activity within the UK. These are listed in Table 1.
The panels followed very much the Japanese model using a Delphi questionnaire that went to 10,000 respondents. Sixteen individual sector reports were published plus an overarching study. Other organisations such as professional institutions, charities, etc were encouraged to undertake their own in depth exercises based on some of the recommendations of the panels. Each panel was allowed to formulate their recommendations in their own way. For example the Materials Panel (2) made 7 key recommendations where it was felt that increased resources should be focused and they also suggested those topics where there should not be any increase in resource unless major breakthroughs were made. In this latter category it recommended the area of monolithic structural ceramics.
The reports were considered to be the first phase of the Foresight exercise which was followed by a dissemination phase. The findings of the panels were taken to various regional meetings and shared with local communities. The attendance at these was highly variable and for many research scientists and engineers the actual findings of the panels was seen as idiosyncratic and somewhat bland. In some senses this was a relief since the potential impact on the funding mechanisms and future research activity was not seen to be significant. More importantly, certain sectors felt left out of the consultation process and in the materials community magnets, surface engineering and textiles were among those that voiced their concern over this.
In the middle of this exercise there was a General Election in which there was a change of government from a Conservative to a Labour administration. However the commitment of the new administration was confirmed when on 17 April 1997 the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Tony Blair said:
"We consider Foresight to be a long overdue attempt to address the UK's failure to turn excellence in basic research into industrial success. We want to make sure that its momentum is not lost".
This was backed up in practice by the relevant ministers in the Department of Trade (DTI) and Industry. Thus there was a seamless transition as government changed.
Phase 3 of the first round of the Foresight activity was entitled Engaging the Community. Here the focus was on encouraging as many people in the relevant communities to become deeply involved in Foresight for their own sake and to start taking into account and owning the changes that may result. Foremost in our thinking was an attempt to engage business leaders, financiers, market analysts, etc so that large corporations would take on board Foresight messages and activity for their future prosperity. It was decided by the government that Trade Associations within the UK would be the most appropriate vehicle to cascade the Foresight messages to industry especially small and medium sized enterprises. To this end, the Materials Panel held a public meeting in London at the beginning of 1998 to which 50 trade associations were invited and 25 attended. Presentations were made from organisations that had undertaken their own successful Foresight exercises and there was a round table discussion with the relevant civil servants from the DTI with the result that a number of trade associations agreed to take Foresight forward with their members Despite continual coaxing and encouragement, to date only three have undertaken such an exercise on behalf of their members. However all three have been very well received with the major outcome being increased communication between competitors and those in the user communities.
One key action took place at the beginning of the Engaging the Community exercise which was to drop the word 'Technology' from the programme. So the UK programme is now called Foresight and not "Technology Foresight." The reason for this was to demonstrate that Foresight is about a process that affects the whole community and is not just concerned with Technology. Although a word has been removed it has led to a change of emphasis. The aims were redefined as "the bringing together of business, the science base, the voluntary sector and government to create a culture of forward thinking and seek to inform decision makers." In the UK Foresight is not seen as a method for predicting the future, a means of telling researchers what to do or just for government and similar agencies. Rather it is about embedding a culture of forward thinking and engaging the whole population in this exercise.
During Phase 3 several other initiatives were undertaken by the Materials Panel. One of the best examples was to produce a booklet of examples of Foresight best practice (3). entitled "Materials Advantage." Secondly, a major initiative was undertaken to produce a booklet for main board directors of large companies concerning the impact that new materials will have on various areas of society. The thrust was to produce a glossy booklet with excellent art work with simple messages that looked at what materials were like in the past, what they are like today and what they may be like in the future. It was entitle Tomorrow's Materials (4). The examples chosen included automobile transport, the home, communications, health, etc. This booklet caught the attention of organisations involved in providing educational material for secondary schools and subsequently a revised an updated version of Tomorrow's Materials was produced for school children and launched in February 1999 by the Minister of Science, Lord Sainsbury of Turville. In addition to the glossy text, a school work book with experiments, questions, etc based on the Foresight methodology was sent to every secondary school in England and Wales and to date 85,000 copies of this have been circulated. A further knock-on effect from this booklet for schools was the invitation to put on a major exhibit at a large event in London (Tomorrow's World Live) by the BBC and attracted over 100,000 school children in July 1999. The University of Nottingham and AEA Technology were invited to put together stands with examples of the impact of tomorrow's materials on various aspects of life. Support was forthcoming from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Institute of Materials who were able to recruit a large number of schools into their Schools Affiliate Programme as a result of this. To date 200 schools have now signed up to this.
Other events included dinners with non-executive main board members of large companies in order to gain their help in forwarding Foresight objectives in such organisations. Considerable effort was expended on bringing together not only the trade association groups, but also other sector groups (for example in textiles and packaging) in order to obtain ownership of Foresight by these communities. It became increasingly clear as a result of all this activity that the Foresight programme in the UK was under resourced and that Engaging the Community was a long and arduous job which couldn't be fitted naturally into a five year time cycle. For this reason, a groundswell of support came from many sectors that the Materials Panel should be retained for a further term.
A consultation exercise and survey were taken at the end of the first round of Foresight. In summary these showed that (a) the process is at least as important as the outputs, (b) networks are key to the success of Foresight, especially those which cut across traditional boundaries and, (c) outputs from Foresight should be shorter, sharper, targeted and emerge faster for debate within the community.
From a Materials Panel perspective there are some more specific outcomes from the first round.
After reviewing the outcomes from the first round the Government decided that it was sufficiently encouraged to proceed to a second round. While the first round had been highly concentrated upon the Department of Trade and Industry, other ministries were brought into the second round, such as the Home Office, Department for Education and Employment, Department of Health and subsequently many others. This has been one of the great encouragements to Foresight in that it is now cutting across the whole of society.
In addition to the initial Foresight objectives of obtaining competitive advantage and enhancing the quality of life, a third objective is that of Sustainable Development. The programme clearly builds on lessons from the first round, but is focused much more on expanding participation and cross sectoral interaction. As such it is labelled a "Think and Do Tank". The emphasis on the doing has become all important and all embracing and is beginning to embed the Foresight culture at many levels. Apart from undertaking normal SWOT and STEEPC analyses on sectors, it is more about matching the visions of possible futures to UK circumstances, strengths and potential capabilities. The horizon is still the long to medium term, yet recognising that certain panels such as Retail, Finance, etc, have to work on much shorter time scales than the more traditional sectors. However, in the main most are looking between 5-15 years ahead.
The new round of Foresight was started in April 1999 with the aim that reports will be published by the various panels in November 2000. The general approach for the current round is that:
Therefore the emphasis of the current round is very much upon a continuous activity rather than stop-go which involves as many people in the community and general population as possible.
After extensive consultation the number of sectoral panels was reduced to 10. These are listed in Table 2.
In addition there were three thematic panels which had a shorter life time, namely:
Most of sectoral panels nominated participants for these thematic panels to ensure good feedback and interaction. Underlying the whole activity were two other issues which all panels were asked to consider, namely:
The panels were constituted as much smaller entities with fewer participants, but with the idea of setting up a number of small task forces and associate programmes. In the case of the Materials Panel there are now 8 members (as opposed to 18 in the first round) who were chosen not because of their areas of expertise but because they have a wide view of the sector and also have the energy and drive to ensure actions are implemented. Clearly it is impossible for the panel to represent the whole sector and interest groups are encouraged to set up their own task forces to report back to the panel. At the current time the Materials Panel has, for example, set up 24 task forces with each panel member being responsible for overseeing a number of these. Each panel has now produced an action plan with definable deliverables wherever possible although it has to be accepted that Foresight by its general nature is difficult to define in these terms.
Associate programmes are those that are run by organisations outside the Office of Science and Technology which are on topics of interest to their membership but are run independently from the main governmental Foresight programme. For example, on the the theme of Ageing Population the Institute of Physics have taken this forward looking at issues of communication, sensors, transport, etc. The Royal Society of Chemistry are involved in developing real time analytical techniques for on site investigation of crimes. Currently there are 25 such programmes in place and more being developed as time goes by.
As stated above, the number of panel members has been significantly reduced and the range of activity increased. By adopting a "bottom up" rather than a "top down" approach requires considerable support for task forces from panel members. However, hopefully this is a transition stage and the foundations are being laid for the future. One aspect that has emerged is that of "branding" which is linked to the quality and credibility of outputs. While it is the desire that as many as possible are involved, it is nevertheless the case that anything with the Foresight label must be of high quality. Thus a stage-gating document has been produced to ensure that all reports from task forces, associate programmes, etc meet an adequate standard of output. If this is achieved then the recommendations from these reports can be widely disseminated.
The panel itself has focused on emerging and cross disciplinary areas which are not covered by existing organisations. For example in materials, these include nanotechnology, packaging, technical textiles, etc. The main materials sectors have been handed over to the various professional institutions to take forward. For example the Institute of Materials is using all its main divisions, including composites, ceramics, steel, light alloys, etc, to do this.
A further aspect of the panel's work is to look at successful start up and spin out companies and see if there are any common lessons that can be learnt from these in the materials field. It is expected that a report on these will be published towards the end of the year 2000. The panel is continuously setting up taskforces and some of these are listed in Table 3.
One of the first major outputs from the task forces has been a report on the potential applications of nanotechnology (5) which was launched at Materials Congress 2000 in April 2000. The schools programme is also continuing and 50 schools are being continuously monitored by the panel with a view to producing a more interactive version of Tomorrow's Materials with the necessary hyperlinks, etc.
A series of dinners have also been formulated with main board directors of large companies to obtain their advice and also to see how supply chains can be used more effectively for Foresight. The major message coming from all of these is the need for high quality people to drive business forward with the necessary engineering skills coupled with business and innovation talent. A topic of debate within the current round of Foresight is "what will education and its providers look like in the future?" A Foresight book entitled "Universities of the Future" has been published which has caused intense ongoing debate (6). Among the issues to be considered are the impact of globalisation of knowledge, a move towards skills base learing at universities rather than knowledge transfer organisations, how continuous training is to be delivered and development of degrees offered by global organisations using networks of universities around the world.
A specific activity driven by the Office of Science and Technology has been formation of the Young Foresight programme which is designed to engage a number of schools involving Foresight principles within both teaching and advising. A series of three pilot television programmes have already been produced looking at invention and innovation and the Department of Education and Employment are now heavily involved in upscaling this activity. Other training organisations such as the local Skills and Learning Councils are also becoming drawn into the Foresight exercise. This is a further sign of how Foresight culture is becoming involved in the knowledge supply chain.
A vast amount of information is available globally and is being generated by panels and task forces, etc. It was necessary to find a means whereby the general public could interact with the Foresight exercise more meaningfully. Especially it is desired that all participants have the opportunity to access the same knowledge base. To this end a Knowledge Pool was created in order to support the Foresight exercises by providing relevant input information, helping to identify people and assisting in both dissemination and debate. The Knowledge Pool is a searchable gateway to a professionally managed electronic library of government, academic and other sites including strategic visions, information and views about the future. It is also a facility for bringing people together with complementary and conflicting visions of the future and of creating new expanded networks. Further, it is a mechanism for private discussion and local consultation. It is a very ambitious project which is still developing as new ideas and functions are required by participants.
The benefits of the Knowledge Pool will take some time to come to fruition but it is a truly international activity which supports the government's strategy of building a knowledge driven economy. It widens participation and consultation and creates creative partnerships. It is also a one stop shop for accessing information. There is also a human interface to the Knowledge Pool which is the service desk which not only allows interface with the public, but supports multiple channels of input and delivers professional information management services. One of these inputs in materials is that of the Materials Information Service which has been developed and run by the Institute of Materials but funded by the Department of Trade and Industry. This allows a one stop shop for any company, researcher, etc to ask for information or be put in contact with the relevant parties and documents.
The Knowledge Pool is an extremely ambitious venture which will develop with time. Its potential is amazing but the panels still need to hold face to face meetings to consult the community. The Materials Panel has already held one of these in this round and the second is planned. The purpose of these meetings is to put forward the emerging ideas and obtain feedback from the community as to their validity and how they can best be taken forward. In addition to specifically sectoral views, the outputs from the thematic panels are also considered at these meetings.
The three current thematic panels have a shorter time period for reporting and consultation. The reason for this is to allow the sector panels to respond to the cross-cutting issues raised in their own reports and activities. All panels have embedded consultation with the community in their plans and the consultation documents for the three thematic panels have just been issued (7). Each panel has taken a different view on the nature and style of the consultation exercise. The Crime Prevention panel has enlarged certain scenarios which initially provide amusing reading until it is clear that some of the predictions may become reality in the near future.
It is often asked if Foresight is a useful exercise or a waste of time. It is clear that many lessons have been learnt from other countries, especially Japan and Germany, but in the UK Foresight is now a very different animal from when it was first started in 1994. While some central organisation and activity is essential to maintain momentum, the key feature of the current round of Foresight is to engage the community as much as possible in undertaking their own Foresight activities and, more importantly, to obtain benefit from them. Evidence from this can be seen in the large number of task forces that have been set up. Young Foresight, Schools Programmes and the way the research councils that fund fundamental research in universities and other institutions are responding to Foresight demonstrates that this mode of thinking is beginning to have an effect. For example, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council claim that over 85% of their projects now fall in line with Foresight activities. Indeed, Foresight, rather than restricting Research Councils has encouraged them to back high risk, innovative ideas.
In order to encourage further development of the science base, a number of Foresight research related awards such as , Foresight LINK and Foresight Challenge are available for cross cutting and visionary multi-client research projects.
Attempts are in progress to quantify the outcomes from Foresight and this is proving extremely difficult to do. In the end the measurement of success will depend entirely on whether the UK has a health economy and high quality of life in 10 years' time compared with what it has today. The methods commonly used to measure outputs are inappropriate in this case and the evidence of success is probably defined by the number of people who are involved and the level of participation that is invoked.
I would like to thank many of the full time civil servants who are engaged in Foresight activities at the Office of Science and Technology, namely Martin Ridge, John Baker, Anita Longley and formerly Stephen Spivey and Brian Ferrar. I would also like to thank members of my own panel, both past and present, who have given so much time and energy to making Materials Foresight a success. It is impossible to even contemplate the large number of people involved in task forces, associate programmes and other activities around the country, but their efforts should be their own rewards. Finally I would like to thank the University of Nottingham for allowing me the space and time to put into the chairmanship of the Materials Foresight Panel.
For further information on the Knowledge Pool or any other aspect of the UK Foresight programme contact "www.foresight.gov.uk"