Doris Schartinger

The Impact of Foresight on Innovation Policy-Making: Recent Experiences and Future Perspectives

Foresight has evolved as a distinct prospective analytical tool: it considers alternative futures of various S&T fields or socio-economic systems by bringing together the perspectives of various stakeholder groups, and thus assists the decision-making processes at different levels. However, in order to avoid hypes — and subsequent disappointments — about what foresight can deliver, the potential contributions to decision-making processes by foresight should be clearly understood. The article puts foresight into this broader context of policy-making processes, with a particular emphasis on innovation policy. It describes the evolution of different policy rationales since the 1960s, develops a framework to classify the impacts of various types of prospective analyses, and reviews the evaluation results of several national foresight programmes by using this framework. On that basis, future directions of how foresight might evolve are considered to spur discussions. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Servitisation of European manufacturing: evidence from a large scale database

Manufacturing firms increasingly produce and provide services along with or instead of their traditional physical products. The goal of this paper is to provide new evidence for this servitisation of European manufacturing and test previous findings based on case studies with a large, firm-level data set. Empirical results indicate that service turnover of manufacturing firms is still small compared to the turnover with physical products. National differences play only a minor role in explaining the degree of servitisation. Firm size is of more relevance. Results reveal a U-shaped relationship between firm size and servitisation which points to advantages of both, small and large firms in servitisation. Moreover, servitisation is positively related to product complexity and the likelihood that the firm introduces product innovation.

Assessing immediate learning impacts of large foresight processes

Purpose – Foresight often encompasses participative approaches for decision making. This paper aims to give a first overview of the authors’ research on immediate learning and networking in the context of foresight. The paper seeks to introduce a practical concept for an accompanying social research of a participatory foresight process for empirically identifying and mapping impacts; and to present empirical results from the study of a specific foresight process.Design/methodology/approach – The authors apply three approaches to analyze impacts. Accordingly data were gathered in moderated workshops for process analysis; structured telephone interviews for qualitative analysis; and surveys for social network analysis.Findings – The accompanying social research produced direct insights on experiences and knowledge acquisition of participants in a large, complex foresight process, as well as a measurable increase of personal ties in this process. This research shows that the perception of the wider spectrum ...

Co-creation of social innovations and new professional institutions: diffusion of therapeutic patient education (TPE) for diabetes in Austria

Abstract The paper examines the link between institutional change and the development and diffusion of social innovations. Patient-centred education in diabetes is a radical social innovation that alters the social and medical relationship between patients and medics. This paper discusses the ways in which institutional work conducted by national and international professional associations has shaped development and diffusion of this social innovation within the Austrian health system. The case study contributes to our understanding of social innovation and institutional change in two respects. First, it highlights the need for purposive institutional work in order to disrupt pre-existing institutions and, thereby, ensure the development and diffusion of a social innovation amongst a community of medical practitioners. Second, the case shows the overtly political work, policing and educating work that professional associations undertook with funding bodies and key policy-makers in order to develop a national programme for diabetes education.