11 Jul 2005

Foresight at a crossroads

Michael Keenan, Fabiana Scapolo
PILOT PROJECT TO SCOPE THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF A EUROPEAN
FORESIGHT ACADEMY
EUR No: 21406 EN, Year: 2004 a link

List of Available Reports: EC, DG JRC - IPTS, ESTO network a link

"Foresight practice today stands at a crossroads. It can develop significantly further, diffusing into ever new areas and situations. Or it can retreat as a passing fad that has had its day for the time being, with a possible return in 2020. The determining factors on the direction that will be followed are manifold, and include the demonstrable usefulness of Foresight in policy and investment decision-making, and the development of a community of practice committed to Foresight as a process. At the time of writing, such a community of practice is beginning to emerge in Europe."

8 Jul 2005

Genesis, Euforia

This important e-publication (European Foundation, 2001) helps in understanding the genesis of the Euforia project and will be of great interest to those involved in the many aspects of Knowledge Society research and reflection.

Living conditions, working conditions
and industrial relations in the
knowledge society

Summary of workshops
Dublin, 13-14 July and 27-28 November 2000


EUROPEAN FOUNDATION
for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions

(an autonomous body of the European Union, created to assist the formulation of future policy on social and work-related matters)

http://www.eurofound.ie/publications/files/EF0123EN.pdf

"The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions organized two research workshops in 2000 related to the emerging knowledge society. The challenge of the workshops was to produce new ideas for the Foundation's Four Year Rolling Programme 2001-2004 by putting together three future oriented project areas. The first area covered the Foundation's own project on the New Forms of Work in the Information Society, especially development of atypical work, telework, flexitime, flexispace, flexi contract and virtual company. The second area covered the work done by the Commission related to the development of information society, especially the strategic challenge to make Europe "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world." The third innovative area consisted of national technology foresights projects from selected European, Asian and African countries.

This report is a summary of the workshop speeches, group works and discussions."


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The Euforia project, web site
The Project poster (gif)

7 Jul 2005

Foresight in the Lisbon process

XTREME EUFORIA: COMBINING FORESIGHT METHODS a link
Rafael Popper, Werner B. Korte

Keywords: Foresight methods, Knowledge Society, Europe and the Lisbon objectives.

(EU-US SEMINAR: NEW TECHNOLOGY FORESIGHT, FORECASTING & ASSESSMENT METHODS. Seville 13-14 May 2004)

"The EUFORIA project was launched to explore the Knowledge Society and new ways of organising, designing and managing foresight activities. The combination of several 'hard' (performance indicators, critical influences analysis) and 'soft' (literature review, brainstorming, panels, workshops, Delphi and scenario building) techniques was carried out in a multi-cultural and cross-regional setting to achieve further insights and gain experiences with respect to the strengths and weaknesses of different individual and combined approaches for goal achievement as part of foresight activities."

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Euforia, Knowledge Society Foresight Reports

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The knowledge society in Greece: current situation and future trends
"Scenarios for the development of a KS in Greece
Background
Based on the current situation and the major drivers and trends characterising the course of Greece to the Knowledge Society, three scenarios were developed:

- the “Awakening” scenario where social change and radical reconsideration occurs and the conditions are created for the trends to have positive impacts and for the negative impacts to be tackled,
- the “Lethargy” scenario with no major changes from today (business as usual), and
- the “Nightmare” scenario where the characterising trends lead to negative impacts due to ineffectiveness of measures, no real change and other external factors with severe consequences."

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27 Jun 2005

Knowledge management systems

Rx for Learning - TUFTS UNIVERSITY CIO Magazine Feb. 1, 2001

Down from the Ivory Tower

"When the site made its debut in September 1997, students raved to their instructors about having around-the-clock access to course material on the Web. "The great thing was being able to look at the slides at home," says Bullitt, who lives 20 miles from the downtown Boston campus. Using the website as a personal knowledge management system, she organized her course materials into her own folders and made frequent electronic notes. "It's like having an annotated textbook that I could use anywhere, anytime," she says."

"Tufts' Health Sciences Database sets the standard for medical school knowledge management systems. Medical, veterinary and dental students use the website to study. Among its benefits, the system helps students master course material, keeps the curriculum up-to-date and increases organizational efficiency."

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Knowledge Management Explorer Case Studies in Knowledge Management - articles, corporate web sites provide insights into the use of KM in industry. (THE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT RESOURCE CENTER)

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KM and High Performance KnowledgeBoard

26 Jun 2005

ForSociety ERA - Net project

ForSociety : Project Summary

Description of Work
"Foresight is being widely used all over Europe at national level to shape the future of research. The primary objective of the ForSociety ERA-Net is to improve the national programmes of the partners, enhance their European content and achieve a structuring effect on the ERA. These objectives will be delivered in a three-year period, through three sets of coordination activities organized in three work packages:

WP1: Systematic exchange of information and good practice between the participant's programmes in order to provide mutual learning opportunities, and to expand the ERA-Net activities beyond the partners.

WP2: Strategic activities in order to provide background analyses and studies on the programmes, and to prepare them for joint activities.

WP3: Development and implementation of joint activities in order to establish the foundations for a sustainable coordination between the programmes."

WP4: ERA-Net Management.

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The COS together with the ERA Net Forsociety and the DG Research of the European Commission organized a conference "Present Needs Future Options” December 2-3 2004, The Hague

25 Jun 2005

in a Knowledge society


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Citizens and Governance
in a knowledge based-society

Work Programme 2002 -2003

This Work Programme - the basic text for ensuring communication between the European Commission and the research community in relation to the implementation of the Sixth Framework Program - Priority 7 "Citizens and governance in the knowledge based society".

Research Area 1 Improving the generation, distribution and use of knowledge and its impact on economic and social development

Research Area 2: Options and choices for the development of a knowledge-based society

Research Area 3: The variety of paths towards a knowledge society
Citizenship, democracy and new forms of governance


Research Area 4: The implications of European integration and enlargement for governance and the citizen

Research Area 5: Articulation of areas of responsibility and new forms of governance

Research Area 6: Issues connected with the resolution of conflicts and restoration of peace and justice

Research Area 7: New forms of citizenship and cultural identities

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Citizens and governance in a knowledge based-society
Homepage, CORDIS FP6

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"Priority 7" - 1st call for Proposals – List of funded projects

CITIZENS AND GOVERNANCE IN A KNOWLEDGE-BASED SOCIETY
Synopses of projects funded as a result of the First Call DRAFT
a link
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Project Fact Sheet

Foresight and Society ERA-Net
Laying the Foundations for an ERA-Net on Foresight and Society

Biotechnology foresight

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8 Jun 2005

How to teach: Knowledge and Knowledge Management


There are many things that you can do to encourage
knowledge workers to change the way they work and to
use KM systems, but by far the simplest and most obvious
is to involve them in the project from the very beginning.
Knowledge workers need to participate in the design and
development of such systems. They need to have ownership.
It only makes sense!


David Gurteen


Download Center, The Gurteen Knowledge Website
The Global Knowledge Review - May 2005
The Journal for Learning, Creativity, Innovation, KM and Personal Development.

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Making Knowledge Work Conference Materials, May 2005

KnowledgeBoard The Global Knowledge Event: Gurteen and Bizmedia's two day conference: Making Knowledge Work, 17 - 18 May 2005

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22 May 2005

Workshops in May

We see new trends. Web Office and Knowledge Academy (knowledge management, futures and foresight research domains) are on agenda.

Fostering strategic thinking and policy priorities setting (at European, national, regional, corporate levels), a field of inquiry on investments in intangibles should be considered of critical importance within a new, knowledge economy.

Rethinking the EU policy/Lisbon strategy objectives aiming to make Europe “the most competitive economy in the world”, two interacting issues are to be dealt with by individuals, organizations, governments: KNOWLEDGE UNDERSTANDING (to fill gaps between knowledge building and sustainable knowledge transfer to users) and KNOWLEDGE VALUATION ( to explore transparent decision-making related to investments in intangibles).

INTANGIBLES are:
"non-material factors that contribute to enterprise performance in the production of goods or the provision of services, or that are expected to generate future economic benefits to the entities or individuals that control their deployment"

(A working definition by the European HLEG on the Intangible Economy (2000)

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European Observatory on Intangible Assets

THE INTANGIBLE ECONOMY
IMPACT AND POLICY ISSUES
Report of the European High Level Expert
Group on the Intangible Economy
By Clark Eustace

57. Defining intangibles.

"(...) the boundaries, constituents and definitions of the set vary
according to the perspectives of the different interest groups - for example whether we are dealing with accounting concepts, or measures of national income and wealth, or how to manage and extract value from key business investments and assets.

58. Some interest groups - notably the accounting standards bodies - necessarily limit their definition of intangibles to those factors over which legal rights have been assigned, such as patents, marks and copyrights. We took the view that control is more important than ownership and that any definition should encompass factors such as competencies, skills and know-how, networks and business relationships, as well as external factors arising from the legal, administrative and regulatory environment. The locus of interest has also been expanded through the use of scorecards36 for intellectual capital reporting by corporate innovators in this field, such as Skandia, Celemi and Ramboll. As a working definition, the HLEG took
intangibles to be:

"non-material factors that contribute to enterprise performance in the production of goods or the provision of services, or that are expected to generate future economic benefits to the entities or individuals that control their deployment "


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Building intangible value from the outside in
Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood

Human Resources Australia's information resource on HR issues

25 Apr 2005

Political leadership role

Europe: futures

Links to Estonian sites

The Estonian Government’s European Union Policy for 2004-2006


Eesti ja Euroopa Liit :: EU Documents

Estonia in the EU

Estonia in NATO

INAUGURATION PONTIFICATE BENEDICT XVI

VATICAN CITY, APR 24, 2005 (VIS) - Given below is the text of the homily - published in English, French, Spanish, Italian and German - delivered by the Pope during the Mass for the inauguration of his pontificate:

VIS-Press releases
the link

"Yes, the Church is alive - this is the wonderful experience of these days. During those sad days of the Pope's illness and death, it became wonderfully evident to us that the Church is alive. And the Church is young. She holds within herself the future of the world and therefore shows each of us the way towards the future."


"We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary."


19 Apr 2005

Lecture by Cardinal Ratzinger, 1999

Culture and Truth: Some Reflections on the Encyclical Letter, Fides et Ratio

St. Patrick's Seminary - Patrician - Lecture by Cardinal Ratzinger

"The search for truth by believers takes place in a movement in which listening to the Word that has been spoken meets continually with the search of reason. Through this process, on the one hand, faith becomes more profound and more pure, and, on the other hand, human thought is enriched because of the new horizons open to it.

It seems to me that one could develop a bit further this notion of circularity. Philosophy too should not enclose itself in total particularity or simply in the results of its own reflections. As philosophy must be attentive to empirical discoveries, which occur in the various branches of knowledge, so too it should consider, as a source of knowledge for its enrichment, the holy tradition of religions and, above all, the message of the Bible."



"Indeed, the reduction to experience traps the human person in the subjective. Revelation is more than experience, and only thus does it give us an experience of God and help us to bring our own experiences together, to order them rightly, and through positive and critical discernment, to understand and communicate them. I am convinced that, in our current philosophical and theological debate, precisely this section of the Encyclical must he given further thought and investigation; it could well become a valuable source of enrichment for cultural research in our time."

17 Apr 2005

knowledge on the Lisbon strategy

LISBON REVISITED - FINDING A NEW PATH TO EUROPEAN GROWTH

EPC / Accenture
a link

"An elitist project?

The Lisbon process has not attracted bottom-up support at a grass roots level, and the absence of the press and civil society engagement has resulted in a process that is seen as removed from the citizens for whom it claims to operate. While the project remains owned and managed from the top-down, the serious lack of information surrounding Lisbon will continue to limit the urgency and momentum of the process, and weaken the legitimacy of that ownership. Key stakeholders are not sufficiently involved in the Lisbon process, particularly at the early stages of policy formation, at a European, national and regional level. Learning from the example of the single market programme in terms of managing an effective information campaign would be beneficial. At present Lisbon is at serious risk of being regarded as an elitist project. This is in some respects symptomatic of the wider issue of democratic deficit within the Union and its institutions.

Although Europe is making progress towards the social, economic and environmental objectives set out by Lisbon, it is clear that this is not happening quickly enough. Performance levels vary significantly across Europe and, in some cases, the performance gap is increasing. As a result, the EU is currently not on target to deliver its objectives by 2010, leaving it increasingly vulnerable to the internal and external challenges outlined in previous chapters." (p.42)

3 Apr 2005

the Manifestation of the Spirit

God Man Nature
the Holy Spirit
Manifestation of the Holy Spirit
Jesus Christ
John Paul II Karol Wojtyla

1 Apr 2005

God and nature. Knowledge

Letter of Pope John Paul II; Our knowledge of God and nature: physics, philosophy and theology

To the Reverend George V. Coyne, S.J.
Director of the Vatican Observatory
From the Vatican, June 1, 1988

JOHN PAUL II GENERAL AUDIENCE Wednesday 17 March 1999



a link to
JOHN PAUL II ON SCIENCE AND FAITH
Resources for Catholic Educators

28 Mar 2005

CROP

I can say that understand and highly appreciate Bob’s thinking and knowledge processes.

"When two or more people collaborate to think about the same situation, we can refer to this as intellectual teamwork."
CROP - Communities Resolving Our Problems
http://ceap.wcu.edu/houghton/learner/basicidea.html

The Web Office
Professor Robert S. Houghton
Director of Technology
College of Education and Allied Professions
Western Carolina University, Cullowhee, North Carolina 28723, USA

"Relentless and accelerating change in our culture and communities requires equally relentless pursuit of ideas and systems that can address our problems and questions even faster than they emerge. The basic idea of the CROP web site is to discover (find and share), think about (reframe, refine) and solve these problems while learning and using the latest information technologies. The main branches at the top of the CROP web pages aid two audiences that seek to spell out and solve problems, individuals and communities. CROP's design also plans for an integration of school-based and work-based learning communities."

"CROP is a system for processing problems. In design, it is a general model for problem processing from K-12 into adulthood. It makes a clear distinction between problem processing and problem solving. Problem solving is just one sub-part of this larger problem process. The term community applies to a community of one (the community of interacting thoughts in one's own head) and to the communities of larger numbers of interacting people (within a classroom, work team, or state or nation, etc.)."

"The heart, the motor of CROP is questioning. This includes discovering, generating and sharing questions. Such skills are critical in order to move from surviving to thriving in this time of rapid change in the world. With CROP we have an ever-changing product. CROP serves as the foundation and set of solutions for organizations that wish to thrive and schools that wish to prepare learners for such organizations. CROP’s database products provide question management as a major aspect of Knowledge Management (KM)."
iThink Blog

In Latvia, on the shores of the Baltic Sea, I think on similar approach and opportunities looking into Entrepreneurial Foresight Basics/Network processes and outputs.
click the first post at EFN blog