Revisiting Foresight Rationales: What Lessons from the Social Sciences and Humanities?

Foresight is now a well-established tool used by policy makers, strategists, and managers. It has been widely applied at the national level by science ministries and research funding agencies for developing shared long-term visions, for setting research priorities, and for strengthening interactions within research and innovation systems. It is being increasingly utilised in regions to formulate regional science and innovation policies. It is also used in organisations – both public and private — for scanning future threats and opportunities, and for formulating and future-proofing long-term strategies.

The argument in this chapter is that whilst the objectives set for foresight are increasingly wide-ranging, the conceptualisations of these activities, as indicated by their ‘intervention theories’, are somewhat lagging behind the latest insights offered by the social sciences and humanities (SSH). This conceptualisation gap has led to a situation where foresight activities are insufficiently understood, or even misunderstood, making any assessment of their outcomes problematic.

At the moment, policy makers and analysts are still trying to better define the expected outputs and outcomes of foresight, based largely upon an empiricist approach of learning from case experiences. Whilst an empiricist (inductive) approach is worthy and most definitely necessary, the argument in this chapter is that it is insufficient on its own. We argue that to improve our understanding of foresight, we must turn to the SSH for a more deductive mode of enquiry.