Dr. Ozcan Saritas presented on how foresight can help achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs present an ambitious vision for development by 2030 but implementing them will be complex due to their interconnections and unknown future challenges. Foresight uses systematic, participatory processes to gather future intelligence and build long-term visions that can inform present-day decisions and mobilize joint actions. It can help assess country contexts, set national and regional SDG targets and strategies, and monitor and evaluate progress over time by comparing foresight outcomes. Foresight outputs like visions, intelligence, and evidence-based guidelines can benefit stakeholders across government, business, science, education and society.

1. Designing scientifically possible, economically feasible & socially desirable futures
Dr. Ozcan Saritas
osaritas@hse.ru
National Research University, Higher School of Economics
Moscow
Foresight for Sustainable Development Goals

2. Agenda
 Sustainable Development Goals and their nature
 Complexities of goals and their implementation
 Need for Foresight
 How Foresight may serve to achieve the goals?
 Major prospects and innovations in Foresight
 Conclusions
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3. 3
UNITED NATIONS Sustainable Development Goals

4. 4
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
 Offer a ‘supremely ambitious and transformational vision’
for our common future till 2030
 Provide an integrated vision that is supported by
quantified targets for future development till 2030
 Universally applicable to all countries while taking into
account the specifics of different national policies,
priorities and their capacities and levels of development

5. 5
Implementing the SDGs
 A complex system of issues requiring a holistic view
 Systemically inter-connected and inter-dependent
 Require customised targets, co-ordinated strategies and
policies for intervention, commitment and impact
 Plenty of unknown unknowns in the form of wild cards,
surprises and shocks during the implementation

6. Foresight
New Foresight landscape

7. Foresigh
t

8. 8

9. Understanding global megatrends
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10. 10
Complexity of systems
Fossil fuel
reserves and
alternative
conversions
Energy
conversion &
power
distribution
Urban buildings
& infrastructure
as carbon sink
Renewable
resources, local &
regional
Bio-mass &
bio-fuel
energy
Global atmosphere
with carbon storage
and climate balance
Fossil fuel extraction
industry – national /
global
Carbon
embedded
in goods &
products
Carbon stored /
embedded in waste
to landfill or
recovery
Carbon
emissions
responsibility
via energy
demand
Carbon net
trade balance of
imports / exports
Carbon
sequestration in
soil & biomass
CITY
CITY-REGION
REGION
Ravetz (2011)
Mapping patterns of conflict / competition (political / economic / ideological): in typical situations of
displacement & disconnection (physical / economic / social / political)

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Demand & Supply – Challenges & Opportunities
Information and Communication Technology
New Materials &
Nanotechnologies
Medicine and Healthcare
Biotechnology
Energy Efficiency and Energy Saving
Transport and Space Systems
Environmental Management

12. 12
How Foresight might help?
“the application of
 ‘systematic’,
 ‘participatory’,
 ‘future-intelligence-gathering
and medium-to-long-term
vision building process’ to
 ‘informing present-day
decisions and mobilising joint
actions’”

13. Foresight assisting policy coherence and
implementation
13

14. Fully
Fledged
Foresight
14

15. 15
Actor network systems
Banks & finance
TTOs
HEIs & PRIs
Research
centres
Industrial firms:
Large & SMEs
Complementary
products prod.
Services
Governmental /
regulatory bodies
Distributors
Suppliers
Trade
associations
Components
Machinery
Specialised
infrastructures
Training &
Know. transfer
Research &
Technical skills
Managerial and
service support
Value
added
cycle

16. Actor networks: Inputs & Outputs
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17. 17
Localisation & Decentralisation
 Vertical and horizontal policy integration
 Effective communications within and across
governance levels by ensuring that interactions
among policies are mutually supportive
 Shift from Government to Governance
Government: A top-down approach to regulate the behaviour of
institutions and people in quite detailed ways – ‘powers over’
Governance: Sets the parameters of the system within which
people and institutions behave so that self-regulation achieves
the desired outcomes – ‘powers to’

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Formation & implementation
• Strategic scalar alignment: Being context-aware
and positioning at the regional, national and global
levels with tensions and opportunities arising at all
levels
• Complementarity: Between value chain,
institutional and social actors for investment,
competitiveness, risk sharing and mutual learning
• Networking: Socialization, Articulation,
Combination & Internalisation to make use of tacit
and explicit knowledge embedded in clusters
Fikirkoca & Saritas (2012)

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Initiation
Intelligence
Imagination
Integration
Intervention
Impact
Interaction
Horizon Scanning
Literature review
Big Data & STI mining
Social Network Analysis
Systems Mapping
Scenario Planning
ModellingGaming
Delphi
Multi-criteria analysis
Success scenarios
SWOT analysis
Visioning
Roadmapping
Backcasting
Strategic planning
Critical/key technologies
Forecasting
Scoping
Priority-setting
Policy assessment
Survey
Interviews
OR methods
Stakeholder mapping
Expert panels
Workshops
Action planning
Environmental Scanning
Voting
Polling
Indicators
Brainstorming
Interpretation
Systemic Process:
FORSTAR – Foresight process & methods
Miles, I., Saritas, O. and Sokolov, A. (2016). Foresight for Science, Technology and Innovation, Springer Verlag, Berlin.

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Foresight process
1. Initiation: Scoping and preparation to embark upon
Foresight
2. Intelligence: Creates shared understanding and mutual
appreciation of issues through environmental and horizon
scanning
3. Imagination: The input from scanning is synthesised
into quantitative and qualitative models of the situations
4. Integration: Analyses the alternative models of the
future and ‘prioritises’ them, through intensive
negotiations among system actors and stakeholders, to
create an agreed model of the future
5. Interpretation: Translates future visions into long-,
medium-, and short-term actions for a successful change
programme
6. Intervention: Creates plans to inform present day
decisions for immediate change to provide structural and
behavioural transformations
7. Impact: Assesses the results and impacts of Foresight
exercise, learns from experience and provides input for
next round
8. Interaction: Develops mechanisms to provide the
engagement of experts and stakeholders through the
Foresight process to ensure transparency, inclusivity and
legitimacy of the Foresight activity
Miles, I., Saritas, O. and Sokolov, A. (2016). Foresight for Science, Technology and Innovation, Springer Verlag, Berlin.

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New instruments for Foresight: Big Data Analytics
HSE ISSEK “Intellectual Analytics” System
Literature & media
review
Pattern analysis
Global Technology Trend Monitoring System
(GTMS)
Big data
methods and
qualitative
analytical tools
Network & cluster
analysis
Focus groups &
interviews
Bibliometric &
patent analysis
NLP & semantic analysis
Expert evaluation
STEEPV, WS, WC &
SWOT analysis
Analytical
reports
> 50 000
SourcesProcessesResults
Grants
NSF,
NIH
Annual scientific
conferences
> 100
Scientific publications
> 2 mln
scientific articles
> 10 000
research fronts
PCT Patents
> 700 000
News
feeds
> 100
Expert
database
>10 000
Russian and foreign

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How Foresight may help?
Outputs
• Build visions of the future
• Provide anticipatory intelligence to
system actors
• Set general research directions
• Inform policy and public debates
• Inform funding and investment
priorities
• Evidence-based policy guidelines for
policymakers and other innovation
actors
Outcomes
• During the Exercise
– Building of new linkages
– Changing perceptions / new
understanding / enlightenment
– Articulation of widely-shared
visions
• Immediately After
– New (interdisciplinary) R&D
programmes and projects
– Further use and development of
Foresight results
• Sometime Later
– R&D and innovation impacts
– New working communities

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How Foresight may help?
• Convergence of STI with social and industrial policy
in the context of knowledge economy
• Emerging reorientation of STI policy with emphasis
upon demand-side policies
– Key driver of development is linkage between local
capabilities and effective demand
– With an industrial policy based upon fostering clusters,
platforms and supply chains
• Concept of innovation ecosystem, where Foresight
contributes in creating shared strategic vision
between the actors involved in clusters

24. Planning for SDG implementation
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 To assess the relevance of the goals for the country
context based on current data and trends regionally (i.e.
world regions) nationally and sub-nationally
Today SDGs
2030
2025
2020
Source: Bizikova, 2016

25. Planning for SDG implementation
25
• SDGs • National,
regional
relevance of
SDGS
• National
SDGs
targets
• Region 1
• Region 2
• Regional
SDGs
strategies,
policies,
• National,
SDGs
strategies
• Regional
SDGs
strategies,
policies,
• Monitoring
,
Reporting
• Sub-
national
SDGs
targets
• Sub-
national
SDGs
targets
• Comparing and aggregating Foresight outcomes
Source: Bizikova, 2016

26. Users of Foresight outputs by stakeholders
Trend
monitoring
results
GOVERNMENT
 Strategies and policies
 Allocating national funds
BUSINESS/INDUSTRY
 Strategies and innovation programmes
for emerging global trends
 New products and markets
 New technologies for production and
services
SCIENCE
 Identify R&D priorities
 Promising research themes
& concepts
 International partnerships
EDUCATION
 Education programmes
SOCIETY
 Evaluating STI programmes
 Understanding challenges & opportunities
 Civil society support & engagement
 Social adaptation
 New skills and capabilities
 Academic research programmes
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27. Conclusions and further development
 SDGs are broad targets and mean different things for
different countries/regions
 Implementation requires Foresightful actions
 …complemented by the systemic thinking of:
- the goals
- actors & networks
- process & methodology of implementation
 Clear strategies and roadmaps will help to pave the way
towards sustainable futures
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Further references
www.emeraldinsight.com/fs.htm
http://foresight-journal.hse.ru/en/

29. End of presentation.
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Ozcan Saritas
osaritas@hse.ru
National Research University Higher School of Economics
Moscow, Russian Federation