The Foresight Project, run by the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology in New Zealand during 1998/99, focused on exploiting knowledge for our future prosperity and well-being, and our development as a knowledge society. Rather than projecting into the future with assumptions about how today works, foresight involves constructing a vision of a desirable future, and then identifying strategies to get there. Through the Foresight Project, major innovation challenges for New Zealand were identified.
The world economy is undergoing significant change, with far greater emphasis on the ability to create, store, distribute and apply knowledge. For New Zealand the successful development of a knowledge society will involve moving to systems, services and products with higher levels of value added by knowledge.
Context for public investments in RS&T is provided by RS&T:2010 The Government's Strategy for Research, Science and Technology to the Year 2010. This sets out the Government's broad vision for RS&T in New Zealand, covering both the public and private sector. The vision is built around three overarching goals:
In order to identify the major challenges New Zealand faces in achieving a society characterized by knowledge-led innovation, the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology introduced the Foresight Project in 1997. The two broad goals of the Project were to:
The Project sought to establish a shared sense of the knowledge, skills, technologies and competencies New Zealand will need, through:
A wide range of self-organizing groups across New Zealand were encouraged to:
The Foresight Project provided a framework for thinking about the sort of future New Zealand wants, and defined the context for the Government's RS&T investments. The Government invests in research, science and technology to generate new innovative, economic, environmental and social capacity. In this way, the Government underpins innovation throughout all sectors of New Zealand. It cannot work in isolation - innovation must be focused on the needs of end-users - whose lives, environments and enterprises will be affected by new knowledge and technological change
For the last 150 years, New Zealand's economy has been based largely on wealth generated from our land-based assets - and we have been good at it. But in an age of global markets, global competition, we need to start doing things differently.New Zealand has responded to changes in the global economy, including declining commodity prices, the formation and breakdown of trade barriers and protected markets, and the rapid evolution and dispersal of information technologies by opening its economy and increasingly focusing on manufactured goods and services. Given these changes, New Zealand is now facing the challenge to think beyond how we have traditionally created wealth. We must find new ideas, new ways to growing our economy. To achieve these goals, New Zealand must successfully enter the age of the knowledge economy. This means a move to more knowledge based technological innovation.
For New Zealand, the development of a knowledge society will involve moving towards systems, services and products with higher levels of value added by knowledge. We have to challenge our thinking around some of our more traditional industries such as our biological industries. Why use all our dairy cows as milk factories only? What about the option of developing it as a pharmaceutical laboratory. A key role of the Foresight Project was to change mindsets and to foster creativity and diversity.
Private sector investment in R&D in New Zealand is very low in international terms (0.32% of GDP). Notwithstanding this fact, the business sector has shown a positive shift in its R&D emphasis during the last decade. For example, more R&D is being performed by the industries producing communications and electronic equipment and instruments, and in the high tech manufacturing sector. However, for New Zealand to develop further as a knowledge economy, the right environment needs to created where the whole of the private sector thinks about its business differently and invests in R&D to enhance the competitiveness of business for achieving long term outcomes. The Foresight Project provided a framework to foster this kind of thinking by getting end users of R&D talking to those that do the research.
The essence of a foresight-based approach to strategic thinking about the future is to begin not in the present, but in the future. Foresight is not centralised planning. Strategic planning can often be bound by thinking based on assumptions about how today works. Projecting assumptions formed in the past (e.g about lifestyles, customers, markets) into the future can be problematic. The foresight process attempted to build a picture of the research, science and technology strategies appropriate for taking New Zealanders forward into the future. It tried to describe successful positions in the future and a pathway for getting there. This allows for ongoing learning and an understanding of the particular science and technology that is needed to shape a desirable future.
Three scenarios were developed for the Foresight Project. These scenarois were not predictions, not plans, but stories to stimulate thinking. They extrapolated various trends that already existed. Which ones did we want to accentuate? Which ones did we want to avoid? Above all else, we needed to look at what was possible, and what would create the best chances of success.
The three scenarios were:
The "Sector Strategy" phase was a key part of the Foresight Project. Sectors were self-defined and self-organising. These strategies created a self-sustaining process of future-based strategic thinking that it is hoped will long outlast immediate needs to provide advice on science and technology priorities.
The on-going development of sector strategies will ensure that users continually reappraise what they want from science and technology. This in turn means that users can provide feedback that will ensure that public investments in science and technology remain effective.
To assist sectors in the development of their strategies, a template was developed which used a "foresight framework" based around four key questions.
These four questions were:
Answering these questions required sectors to define a vision of a desirable future for their sector, what outcomes and competencies will necessary to reach that vision, and what investments, by whom, will be required.
The Foresight Project brought together a diverse range of individuals and groups to facilitate thinking and ideas around New Zealand's future. It was therefore critical that we had an effective tool to capture and manage the large amount of information surrounding the Foresight Project, including sector strategy information. It was also important that the networks that had been built over the different stages of the Project be strengthened and expanded to enable Foresight to have a continuing impact. To this end, the InnovationLink:2010 database was developed. It is an online database where anybody could go in and search, register interest in the Foresight Project, and submit a sector strategy.
The Government released the "Blueprint for Change" in May, 1999 following the Foresight Project. The Blueprint was the policy response to the Foresight Project. It set out a new strategic framework to achieve the best outcomes form the approximately $600 million the Government invests in research, science and technology each year.
This investment framework provided:
Overall, this policy document signalled a shift from a narrow focus on how much the Government proposes to spend to a broader view on what it wants to achieve through its investment. The document signalled an emphasis shift from "funding" to "investment". This has a number of implications:
The embedding of foresight thinking through the Foresight project has allowed an evolutionary process to be put in place to increase the effectiveness of Government investment in research. It has promoted a systems view of the links from inputs to outcomes. The project has already delivered benefits to the operation of the RS&T system in New Zealand. There is a better understanding of the need for knowledge to underpin technological change.
The importance of the process itself, quite separately from any specific results, cannot be underestimated. A broader understanding was obtained of the importance of underpinning research and of the pivotal role of partnerships and networks.
The resulting policy response from Government has emphasised these points, with new investment in basic research and a greater emphasis on a wider innovation system approach to the design of policy interventions.
The new annual strategic reporting requirement put in place after the Foresight Project seeks to embed ongoing foresight as part of a rolling evaluation and priority setting cycle.
This requires the agencies that manage the Government's RS&T investments to report on the impacts their investments are making towards target outcomes. There are significant difficulties in linking measurable achievements to specific investments. Furthermore, it may take some time before clear relationships between RS&T investments and outcomes can be defined. Nevertheless, such evaluations challenge purchase agents, as well as researchers, to assess how they can contribute to achieving the Government's goals.
These reports will address a range of questions, including: