The document discusses the relevance of anticipatory practices for innovation, emphasizing the importance of collective expectations and shared visions in mobilizing diverse innovation actors. It explores various types of anticipatory practices, such as corporate foresight and collective policy-oriented roadmapping, while analyzing findings from a project involving interviews with innovation leaders across Europe. The document also addresses the challenges and benefits of networked foresight in enhancing interorganizational innovation cooperation and suggests directions for future research in foresight practices.

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Networked forms of foresight
- intermediary between policy and companies?
Kornelia Konrad, University of Twente, NL
Department of Science, Technology & Policy Studies (STePS)
SCIENTIFIC WORKSHOP ON TRANSFORMING INNOVATION POLICY
Madrid, April 25, 2017

2. Overview
 Relevance of anticipatory practices for innovation
 Observations
 Collective policy-oriented roadmapping
 Networked corporate foresight
 IIT project
 Discussion
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3. Relevance of anticipatory practices for innovation
 Collective expectations key for mobilisation, guidance, coordination of
diverse set of innovation actors (companies, PROs, policy, finance)
 Shared visions and expectations key for transitions and radical niche
technologies
 Variety of dedicated forms of anticipatory practices aimed at
supporting innovation policy and innovation processes
 foresight, roadmapping, CTA, …
 Corporate foresight
Sociology of Expectations
Transition Management, Strategic Niche Management
Innovation Management
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4. Observations on 3 types of anticipatory practices at the
crossroads of innovation actors and policy
a. Multitude of dedicated policy-induced foresight studies (EU etc.)
b. Increasing importance of collective roadmapping exercises related to
prioritization of (private)-public funding
c. Companies conducting diverse forms of anticipatory practices within,
but also across companies (IES): networked foresight
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5. Collective policy-oriented roadmapping
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6. Collective roadmapping – NL policy

7. Collective roadmapping
– EU flagship
See Alvial Palavicino 2015

8. Collective roadmapping
– German hydrogen & fuel cell programme
“And we check [is the project set up]
as we required in our development
plan. This stands above all, this is
our bible.” (NOW, 2008)
BERTA
Strategy
circle H2
HYBERT
policy
industry
science
See Konrad et al. 2012; Musiolik & Markard 2011; Budde & Konrad, submitted
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9. Corporate Foresight
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10. Networked foresight in innovation ecosystems
Corporate foresight literature focused on company-internal foresight
Recent studies: cases of networked foresight
Benefits for the active shaping of the ecosystem and its environment
 shaping innovation agenda
 shared vision
 external visibility
 support partnering
Foresight conducted in interorganizational innovation networks
with active contributions from network partners and for the benefit
of the network partners and the network (Heger & Boman 2014)
But how common are interorganizational
forms of corporate ‘foresight’ ?
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11. H2020 IIT project
 700 interviews with CEOs / CTOs / Head of R&D or Innovation on
innovation practices – coded for quantitative & qualitative analysis
 11 EU countries
 5 sectors
 Different sizes
 topics
 mapping the future environments
 What? How? Use? Changes?
 innovation ecosystems
 Innovation management
 Open innovation
 Role of policy
www.iit-project.eu
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12. IIT Sample: distribution across countries, size, sector
Firms' size
Frequency Percent
< 10 17 2.4
10-49 193 27.8
50-249 214 30.8
250-3000 191 27.5
>3000 76 11.0
Unknown 3 .4
Total 694 100.0
Sectors
Frequency Percent
Agri-food 99 14.3
Biopharma 92 13.3
Clean technologies 116 16.7
ICT 132 19.0
Manufacturing 255 36.7
Total 694 100.0
Interviews per Country
Frequency Percent
Austria 75 10.8
Czech Republic 75 10.8
Germany 50 7.2
Estonia 80 11.5
Spain 90 13.0
Finland 69 9.9
Ireland 44 6.3
Italy 45 6.5
Netherlands 48 6.9
Portugal 25 3.6
UK 93 13.4
Total 694 100.0

13. Methods used for mapping the future environment
Formal
Market analysis 43,4
Scenarios / horizon scanning 35,2
Patent analysis 29,8
Roadmaps 26,5
Consultants 26
Networked foresight 20,2
Social media 15,4
Informal
Conferences and fairs 64,2
personal contacts with customers 41,7
public information 35,7
professional networks 31,2
Roadmapping and networked foresight
more common among companies that
assign high importance to the IES
N=650 (excluding ‘did not ask’ cases) 13

14. Applying findings from future mapping
Networked
foresight Roadmaps All
Developing strategies 53,8 48 40,6
Initiation of projects 73,9 62 58,7
Challenging projects 42,9 31,3 27,1
New market possibilities 53,8 41,3 34,7
New partners 46,2 24 20,1
agenda building 11,8 14,7 11
N=119 / 150 / 571 (excluding ‘did not ask’ cases)
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15. Case: large multinational manufacturing company
 Uses diverse forms of future mapping with heterogeneous actors
 Healthcare: endusers, partners (hospital units, universities), ministers
 (platform-oriented) innovation strategy aimed at transforming healthcare
 patchwork of activities, blurring design and foresight methods
 iterative and interactive
 policy in principle assigned an important role, welcomed to remain involved in
transformation process
 participates in different layers of collaborative roadmapping processes
 policy / funding programme related
 industry (association) level
 strategic, trusted collaboration partners, e.g. universities
 different degrees of openness and different balance of agenda-setting /
lobbying / coordinative / guiding function 15

16. Actively absorbing future-oriented knowledge, organizing
collective foresight and participation in networked foresight
”Since recently, but this is emerging,
we are active in a cluster, in order to
jointly conduct foresight with
[company X] and other suppliers of
[..], as part of an excellence cluster.”
”We have firstly a collaboration with
various large companies, where we look
in the direction of 2020, or rather 2050,
2020 is too short. Where we regularly
meet with the companies, which are
deliberately representing other
industries, in order to see what they are
working on, what new things emerge?”
“this is a highly important point
for us. We collaborate closely
with universities and research
institutes, invite for instance
diverse development and
system suppliers once a year,
and ask for their appraisal
where the journey is heading
in the future.”
“… trendscouting in the sense of a really large
worldwide network of designers, developers,
idea finders. This really spans from China to the
USA to Australia. […] collecting of themes which
are completely digressive for the normal
employee, but which is highly fascinating.”
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17. Benefits, challenges and trade-offs
a. Policy foresight
Methodologically sophisticated, usually aimed at broad participation;
impact, particularly for companies, less clear
b. Collective policy-oriented roadmapping
Clear intermediary between companies and policy, impact visible /
expected, yet methodologically debatable, prone to interest politics
c. Networked foresight
Based on diverse sources, in general supposedly rather well linked to
companies activities, link to policy mostly weak
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18. Suggestions – up for discussion
 build on intermediary forms of foresight of type b and c, promising for
TIP to get a grip and bring necessary actors together
 For b aim for more independent support and structuring
-> enhance quality and moderate interest politics
 networked (corporate) foresight worth further attention and
investigation, also from the perspective of innovation policy, rather
than innovation management (only)
 Reconsider attention to specific foresight processes, rather consider
their role as an element within a set of anticipatory practices (Konrad &
Alvial Palavicino, forthcoming 2017)
 Prior analysis may help to tailor foresight practices to particular
coordination deficits in a field –> opening vs. closure
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