Grant Agreement number: 101131738

Policy making in all domains is increasingly acknowledged as requiring anticipation, exploration, and co-creation of desirable and realistic paths – all of them functions provided by foresight. Given the complexity, uncertainty and inherent long-term impact, Research and Innovation (R&I) is in the forefront of integrating foresight as a policy support instrument, with applications ranging from priority setting to reforms of entire (eco)systems of innovation.

Although foresight is a relatively mature practice, with journals, conferences and training programmes, its use for R&I is uneven across Europe, with only few countries having managed to develop dedicated capabilities and even fewer to institutionalise the role of foresight.

Considerable effort has been invested towards increasing the coagulation of R&I foresight practices, through increased visibility of foresight exercises (e.g., The European Foresight Monitoring Network and more recently the futures4europe.eu platform), foresight guides and repositories of methods, mutual learning events with countries representatives, in which partner organizations in the current proposal have played a key role.

The current project builds on the accumulated experience and aims to catalyse the formation and maturation of a European R&I foresight community.