Ireland and the knowledge society
Author: Ian Miles
Research institute: PREST, Institute of Innovation Research, University of Manchester
Foundation project: Knowledge society
Research manager: Timo Kauppinen
European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2005
"This report was prepared as a contribution to discussions about Knowledge Society Foresight (KSF) in the Republic of Ireland. It draws on earlier work completed for the EUFORIA project by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (the Foundation)."
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p.48 "To conclude, this report emphasises the point that for successful KSF in Ireland, it is important to ensure that:
- there is demand for this activity from within Ireland;
- specific Irish sponsors are prepared to champion the work;
- Irish foresight practitioners are available to design the process;
- they can enlist researchers, experts and stakeholders into the programme.
In accordance with this philosophy, the report has tried to avoid being too prescriptive in relation to what should be done. There is no standard solution for KSF. EUFORIA, for instance, was a pilot study designed to explore and demonstrate the applicability of foresight tools to KSF. It did not consist of a set of extensive national exercises and, in particular, lacked the close connection to local sponsors and decision-makers that is really required for comprehensive foresight studies. It did succeed, nevertheless, in demonstrating the applicability of various tools, which have described in this report, to give an indication of the lessons learned in relation to types of approaches.(...)
The experience of KSF will be an interesting one to watch, given the very distinctive circumstances in which Ireland finds itself, and the mission that has been set out above for the Irish exercise. It is likely that an Irish KSF will produce results that will be of great interest to those of us in other countries. This will probably be recognised most immediately among new Member States of the EU, given their interest in emulating Irish development. However, the overall strategy of conducting a national KSF study is highly relevant to all EU countries, as they continue to shape their own styles of KS."
