Systems Thinking in Foresight: a systems analysis of British, Irish and Turkish foresight programmes

This paper should be seen as a first step on the way to understanding and analysing Foresight from the systems thinking perspective. The paper analysed three contextually and methodologically unique national Foresight exercises. For the analysis of the exercises, a framework was developed. Based on the basic notions of systems thinking such as causality and holism, this framework structured the questions for the interviews that were held in the UK with PREST, in Ireland with FORFAS and in Turkey with TUBITAK on their national programmes. Viewing Foresight as a system and a sub-system of other environmental systems, a systems perspective helped to see that Foresight is ‘fragmented’ and ‘punctuated’ in its thinking processes due to the production of disconnected ideas relating to the part of the system and their introduction to the physical and social environments at any time. The analyses indicated that certain changes and mistakes would have avoided, if programme managers had thought about the design and the implementation of their exercises in a more systemic way.