Podcast
Foresight Wednesday - explorations about the future based on the present
Vinnova runs active foresight work, where we establish tools and processes to get better at visualizing a possible future. The global challenges are great, at the same time that societal development is accelerating. To be able to make the courageous decisions required - tools are needed that can help us understand what lies ahead. By visualizing and steering towards a specific future, we can find completely new solutions to problems that are otherwise difficult to see when we only start from where we are today.
Joakim Skog, area manager at Vinnova tells more.
- It's about working with scenarios about the future based on the signals we see and the knowledge we have today. With their help, we can make more informed decisions to steer towards or avoid a certain type of future. The future is nothing that happens to us, but what we make of it. We at Vinnova have a special responsibility to become good at foresight. In this way, we can direct our efforts so that they meet the future that Sweden is heading towards. In order to handle changes and new challenges, Vinnova, just like other actors in the innovation system, needs to get better at thinking about the future.
In order to get more people to want to work with foresight, Vinnova has initiated Foresight Monday. It's a lunch hour once a month where you get to take part in a number of short explorations. The participants share signals they perceive that they think can develop into something new or changing.
- We wanted to get more people to look around and find signals that tell us something about the future. Signal spotting is a skill you need to practice and Foresight Wednesday is a learning experience in itself. Expect a stimulating lunch hour where you can take part in investigations into various social phenomena and technologies. You are guaranteed to learn something, be stimulated and at best provoked.
In total, 71 different subjects have been scouted by 62 scouts so far. It has been about everything from "The car is the new cigarette" - about how we don't talk about the large deaths due to emissions from cars to "the (non-)work of the future" in times when people work less and less, reflections on elections in countries around the world (we have had South Korea, the UK and France analyzed, among other things), future programming given the rise of AI in the field, to thoughts about how the pandemic will change the future of vacationing forever.
The next foresight Wednesday takes place on September 28 at 12.05 – 12.55.
Read more and save in your calendar.
Do you want to join in scouting?
Contact Joakim Skog. You get five minutes to scout followed by five minutes of debriefing. You tell us about signals you see that say something about the future. What type of change does this signal represent? What direction does it take us? What does this mean?
Curious to learn more about foresight?
Read more at Institute for the Future
Visit the SITRA Finlands website
Read more on Vinnova's website
Questions?
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Last updated 20 September 2022
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