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Unidad
de Políticas Comparadas (CSIC)
Research Projects
Foresight as a Tool for the Management of Knowledge Flows and Innovation (FORMAKIN)
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Research reports available as PDF files (Acrobat Reader)
This project is funded by the EC as part of the Targeted Socio-Economic Research Programme, IV Framework Programmes. The project will run for three years from December 1st 1997.
Anglia Polytechnic Unversity (UK)
Science and Technology Studies Unit (SATSU)
Project Co-ordinator: Andrew Webster
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas (ES)
Unidad de Políticas Comparadas (UPC, formerly IESA)
Research Unit of Science and Technology Policy (RUSTEP)
Scientific official: Luis Sanz-Menéndez
University of Twente, Enschede (NL)
Centre for Studies of Science, Technology and Society (CSSTS)
Scientific official: Barend van der Meulen
The principal aim of this project is to explore how actors formulate scenarios on technological development, specifically those expressed through foresight processes that operate within and between distinct constituencies in different national contexts in order to identify the contribution foresight makes to managing innovation.
Within this, there are a number of core objectives, as follows:
to analyse how socio-economic actors deal with complex foresight environments and the impact these environments have on the specific development of innovation: the substantive research will refer principally to health informatics and diagnostics in the medical sector.
to improve the understanding of the formal and informal processes and practices associated with foresight in managing innovation and knowledge flows in distinct European contexts. In particular, the project explores the role that formal Foresight programmes play ( as in the Netherlands and the UK) in managing innovation, securing and aggregating knowledge and encouraging its mobility across different constituencies compared with countries (such as Spain) that do not have such a programme.
to determine the role of foresight in balancing the objectives and interests of different public and private constituencies involved in innovation, focused on innovations in the medical field and to identify those tendencies that work towards aggregation and consensus and those that generate conflict between different constituencies
to reflect on present foresight practice, to determine how this is context-dependent, and given this, to identify good and best practices and prepare recommendations relating to an improved use of foresight in the medical sector and to draw wider lessons which relate to other sectors, especially those which have a similarly extensive public investment.
to improve the innovation management of public and private actors (industry, government, universities, public groups, intermediate organisations) and enrich our understanding of, and so the actual use of, foresight
European Commission (IV Framework R&D Programme, TSER). Keywords: knowledge flows, public policy, industrial strategies, health sector. Research director: Luis Sanz-Menéndez. Project coordinator: SATSU, Anglia University (UK).
Last updated 1/07/99.
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