Futures

In this era of rapid change and great uncertainty, governments and organisations, private and public, need to develop better mechanisms for analysing and planning for the future.

• in the development of emerging technologies, at a time when specific commercial outcomes cannot be confidently predicted, a premium is placed on intelligence about the forces likely to shape their characteristics – the ‘killer application’;
• businesses are faced with the challenges of strengthening their strategic planning, building capacity in risk management and contingency planning, and coherently driving towards, and surviving, change;
• governments need improved mechanisms to generate strong visions and policy options, to map policy consequences in advance, and promoting increased learning and adaptive potential in mechanisms and institutions.

Australian Centre for Innovation has been among the pioneers in the introduction of the techniques of foresight, and in particular scenario development and planning to Australia. These techniques rest not on improved attempts to predict the future, but rather on an acknowledgement of the need to manage under uncertainty against a number of scenarios projecting radically different possible futures.

Australian Centre for Innovation has developed and refined the scenario processes originally developed by the Royal Dutch Shell Company, so as to make this technique available and operational in a wide variety of circumstances, and in a form that allows the exercise to be completed in no much more than two days in an organisation.

Australian Centre for Innovation has applied foresight and scenario planning to:

• National priority setting for research
• Raising awareness about the range and extent of possible future major challenges in resource supply, sustainable management and climate change
• Mapping future trajectories for major technologies such as information and communication technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology and new materials
• Charting the possible futures of a wide range of industries, ranging across housing, medical devices, irrigated agriculture, meat processing, and manufacturing
• Enhancing scoping, planning and consultation in new urban developments
• Long-term planning in a number of universities

Australian Centre for Innovation, through Ron Johnston, led the two year national foresight project of the Australian Science, Technology and Engineering Council entitled Long Term Strategies for Science and Technology in Australia in the late 1990s.

Since then, we have:

• completed more than one hundred foresight projects, a selection of which are listed below
• developed and delivered training courses in the application of foresight tools in Australia, South-East Asia, South America, and Europe
• built strong international links with IPTS - the EC futures group in Seville, and the APEC Center for Technology Foresight, in Bangkok, and with these partners, played a role in a number of major international foresight projects

Recent Environment Scanning/Scenario Planning Projects:

1. Emerging Technologies

· Characterisation of the possible trajectories of development, and the social-economic and environmental impacts and opportunities, of information and communication technologies

2. Research Policy and Management

· Establishment of the strategic directions for the Australian research program in Antarctica to 2020, based on a scenario – based analysis of the wide range of economic, technological, environmental and geo-political forces likely to shape the future.

· Enhancement of the quality of proposals to establish a National Center

of Excellence in Biotechnology. Short–listed competitive teams joined a two-day exercise to explore the future potential of biotechnology research.

3 The Future of Manufacturing

· Scoping of the future of manufacturing to 2020 (Intelligent Manufacturing System) via analysis of key drivers of manufacturing, and an international scenario planning exercise.

4 The Future of the Building and Construction Industry

· Steel as a material of the future

· Energy usage in high-rise buildings – the interplay of market demand, energy supply, new technology and government regulation in significant reduction of energy consumption.

· Residential housing in 2020 - scenario-based analysis of the future profile of housing emerging from changing demography, settlement patterns, costs of services, technology, and security and health care needs.

5 National Resource Management

· Implications of climate change and reduced water availability for the future of irrigation, and river health management

· R&D priorities in the Goulburn-Murray water catchment

6 Regional Economic Development

· Use of foresight to identify and promote industry sector cluster formation in the Illawarra

· Formulation of a ‘desert knowledge’ economy in Central Australia. An extended scenario exploration process involving all sections of the community in and around Alice Springs developed a new economic framework for the region based on management and application of knowledge specific to a desert community.

7 Local Government Planning

· Scenario planning has been used with a number of local governments, to provide a more participative and future-oriented basis for their planning.

8 Community Engagement

· A wide range of stakeholders with interests in a new land development in the suburbs of Adelaide were engaged in thinking through the desirable features of the environment in which their children’s children would grow up

9 The Future of Vocational Education & Training in Australia

· This project had its origins in the recognition of the many challenges vocational education faces. Major challenges identified included: shifting from a sectoral- to a network-based organisation, providing effective navigation through multiple learning and work systems, differentiated learning mechanisms for a stratified society, making most effective use of IT capabilities, and enhancing the productivity of learning.

10. Mutli-Country Foresight analysis-Projects involving the APEC Member Economies conducted through the APEC Centre for Technology Foresight

· Water Supply and Management

· Technology for Learning Culture

· Mega-cities

· Nanotechnology

· Human Health in the Post-Genomic Era

· Future Fuel Technology

11. Training courses

Week-long training courses entitled ‘Tools for Managing the Future’ have been run in Bangkok, Thailand and Lima, Peru over the past four years. In addition special short training course in scenario planning and technology road-mapping are regularly delivered to Australian clients.