The Evolution of Strategic Foresight Navigating Public Policy Making

Embracing the theory and practice of strategic foresight and illuminating how different schools of thought regard its role in policy making, Tuomo Kuosa describes how something not traditionally considered an independent discipline, is steadily becoming one. In The Evolution of Strategic Foresight he explains how the practice of strategic foresight has long been closely associated with the military and politics. Linking strategic thinking more broadly to futurology, however, it is quite new. Since strategic foresight refers to the practice of generating analyses of alternative futures and strategies, based on available intelligence and foreknowledge, the practice can and should be applied to companies, business sectors, national and trans-national agencies of all descriptions, and to all aspects of public policy making. The author explains its practice in terms of structure, process, and knowledge domains, and examines its methodologies and systems, along with how strategic foresight can be used to produce better knowledge and be more effectively linked to policy making. Using examples from 30 different countries and with access to interviews and workshops involving key experts, The Evolution of Strategic Foresight will be valuable to scholars, educators, students engaged in strategy and future studies, long-range, public policy and urban planners, analysts; risk assessment experts, and consultants, managers and decision makers in many organisations, public and private.

Contents: Preface; Part I Knowledge: Introduction; Foresight concepts; Strategic concepts; Evolutionary concepts; Inferring in theory; Inferring in foresight. Part II Structure: Principles of strategic foresight in public policy making; Strategic foresight in European Union's older member states' public policy making; Strategic foresight in the European Union's ten new member states' public policy making; Strategic foresight in the public policy making of other countries and transnational organizations. Part III Process: How could the strategic foresight process better facilitate national decision? - views of policy makers and high government officials; How could the strategic foresight process better facilitate national decision making? - views of strategic foresight knowledge producers; How could we improve our public strategic foresight systems? - views of strategic foresight knowledge producers; How could we improve our public strategic foresight systems? - views of policy makers and high government officials. Part IV Discussion: Trilogy of systems thinking, foresight and strategic management; Adjusting foresight, intelligence and inferring for different types of systems; Bibliography; Index.

Dr Tuomo Kuosa specializes in strategic foresight, scanning and visualizing futures knowledge into alternative futures and developing futures research methodologies. He is interested in non-linearities, triggering points and path-dependencies in transformation. Kuosa is a founding partner of AlternativeFutures, which is based in Finland, the company merges strategic foresight with co-design, ideation, concept design and fast prototyping, in order to help customers to develop better services, products and strategies. In 2010 Kuosa worked as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University’s, Center of Excellence for National Security (CENS). CENS is based in RSIS, which has been ranked as Asia’s third best think tank for international politics. Prior to that he has been working in various national and EU foresight projects under Finland Futures Research Centre. Kuosa is internationally well known futurist and esteemed speaker who has written dozens of foresight articles, papers and reports.