This is how you create the conditions for others to lead from the future

We take 21st century challenges, evaluate them with 20th century ideas and respond with 19th century tools.

This quote by Madeleine Albright was widely used by my former colleague Dan Hill when he wanted to explain why we at Vinnova needed to rethink how we finance innovation. And it had an effect, at least on me. It made me think about whether the tools we use as an innovation authority enable innovation that can solve the challenges of the 21st century.

The food system I work with is facing several complex challenges and in our team we came to the conclusion that we needed to think new and do things in a different way to see if it could also have an effect outside the system. As part of that work, we have been working with a mission-oriented approach, and when the opportunity arose internally to take an online course in strategic foresight via the Silicon Valley-based Institute for the Future (IFTF), I took the chance.

It turned out that the methods we worked on to work mission-oriented married very well with strategic foresight. It was as if the piece of the puzzle I was missing was suddenly in front of me. The course gave a good overview of what is involved in leading from the future and some of the methods are now used in the effort A new recipe for the food system.

The effort is about changing the food system by getting actors from different parts of the food system from business, the public sector, academia and civil society to look ahead and unite around bold missions. Instead of letting the actors themselves form constellations, Vinnova is now testing to put them together in five themes.

If we are to be able to write a new recipe for the food system, strategic foresight is needed and therefore the participants in the first step of this effort get to take part in the methodology. Otherwise, there is the risk that we try to solve the problems we face here today, with tools that are not adapted to the complexity of the problems and that may not be relevant in 10-20 years. Som Amy Webb at NYU Business School emphasizes that foresight is not about making forecasts and predictions. It's about preparation. It's about making better decisions in the present based on signals* we already see. Such signal intelligence gives you the chance to see signs of the future in the present and take that into account when looking ahead.

As an innovation authority, we must constantly be at the forefront and challenge ourselves to use new tools that make a difference. As participant Gustav Johannson in A New Recipe for the Food System recently put it, “What we need to do now is to use 2000 number technology and 2000 number solutions and insights to solve our 2000 number problems. We must use AI, regenerative agriculture, food tech, green energy sources, increased knowledge of ecosystems and sustainability to create new systems and new ways of producing food. We have the technology, we have the knowledge and we have the insights. What we have to start doing is to redo and do it right.”

In order to deepen our knowledge of foresight and become even better at helping others lead from the future, Vinnova has now taken the collaboration with the Institute for the Future further and joined their Vantage programme. As part of that, Vinnova is now being offered four places in their Food Futures Council** where three of the places have been allocated to participants in the initiative A new recipe for the food system. I am very much looking forward to how this will make us even sharper to lead from the future.

*Signals can be described as observable events that may be a sign of a larger change such as new technology, scientific breakthrough, new business model, demographic change, strange behavior, new laws and so on).

**The IFTF Vantage Foresight Councils brings forward-thinking professionals together to discuss organizational challenges revealed by urgent futures.