Adaptive Foresight: Navigating the complex landscape of policy strategies

Abstract Adaptive Foresight has been developed at the crossroads of foresight and adaptive strategic planning. Innovation is seen as increasingly complex, interdependent and uncertain and therefore in need of broad and multi-disciplinary exploration and participation. The adaptive planning paradigm provides a natural guide for navigation of this complex landscape: one should consider whether strategic decisions should be deferred until more information is available and simultaneously whether to invest in (real) options which would facilitate the implementation of such decisions if taken some future time. This does not mean that all strategic decisions should be deferred. Rather it is the careful combining of commitment and opportunism that best enables actors to pursue their super-ordinate values and objectives. Compared to conventional foresight, Adaptive Foresight thus favours a more modest interpretation of the collective ability to “shape the future” and stresses the need to adapt to actions by others. Here it is equally important to be able to exploit the upside of uncertainty as to abate its downside. The purpose of this paper is to achieve a conceptual consolidation of Adaptive Foresight, to review in a fairly hands-on way methodological experience thus far, and to outline the substantial methodological challenges ahead.