International Foresight of the 2000s: A Comparative Analysis

Abstract

Since the early 1990s technology forecasts play an increasingly important role in the S&T and innovation policies at the international, country, regional and corporate levels. In this regard, significant attention is given to monitoring and evaluation of such activities to improve their efficiency and quality of outputs. Since 2004, the VDI Technology Centre (Germany) conducts a comparative analysis of technology Foresight studies implemented in China, Japan, France, UK, the USA and the EU using 16 selected technology topics. Despite the many differences observed between the studies, we note some significant common issues: all the foresight studies we analysed deal in detail with the issues of energy, health / medicine / nutrition, biotechnology / life sciences and nano- / microsystems technology, and also with ICT, electronics, manufacturing, process and material technology, environment, defence and space technologies. Herewith, all the technology forecasts we compared assumed that progression in sustainability /environment and ICT was a prerequisite for progress in other areas.