Focusing on an educational paradigm rooted in critical pedagogy, the socratic method, futures studies, and peace education, this essay takes the position that classrooms of the future should be transformed into safe harbors where students are afforded the opportunity to explore, deconstruct and share knowledge of themselves, their experiences, and the world in which they live. Drawing upon experience as a professor of futures studies, peace studies, and international relations, the author argues that, regardless of the subject being taught, students should be active participants in a classroom environment where the professor guides understanding primarily as an individual contributor. The essay embodies Einstein’s assertion that “we can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”, by arguing that in such ‘incubatorial’ classrooms, students and teachers strive, together, to evolve their mutual understanding of the world, which, as knowledge, forms a basis for their collective reality.

Current governance structures are increasingly showing inability to address complex issues such as the Grand Challenges. Dealing with these highly interrelated, cross cutting, extensive and potentially open ended issues requires research, development and innovation to be oriented towards societal needs and demands. Here, developing and applying sustainable long term strategies for socio-technical change on the basis of socially robust knowledge seems inevitable and using the tools of anticipatory governance—forward looking and participation—is essential in order to govern innovation actively and responsibly. Yet, expert-based forward looking has its limits, especially when considering long term perspectives, and may fail to include all necessary opinions. Thus, stakeholder engagement has become a norm over the last decades, but including laypeople into forward looking science, technology and innovation (STI) governance is underexplored. Here, strategy and policy programme development may be well suited to function as early entry point for public needs and values into the innovation process. This paper will briefly review the theoretical basis for transdisciplinary forward looking and provide first insights into an ongoing highly deliberative and reflexive foresight and co-creation process engaging science, society and policy makers, CIMULACT—Citizen and Multi-Actor Consultation on Horizon2020. We will especially focus on the role of technology within a collective visioning exercise that allowed for shared explorations of desirable futures, thereby collecting tacit knowledge as well as social needs and values. Integrating these with stakeholders’ and experts’ knowledge serves for co-creating socially robust knowledge for orienting policy and strategy programming towards needs based science, technology and innovation.

In the face of accelerated change and genuine uncertainties in the business environment as well as the need of processing and interpreting the information coming from majority of sources, foresight research in the enterprises comes into prominence. The main aim of the article is to assess foresight maturity of companies based in Podlaskie province in Poland as one of the least developed regions in Europe. The survey research is preceded by bibliometric analysis and literature review to examine current tendencies in foresight research in organisations. The conclusions drawn from the analysis of the existing works on organizational foresight are that foresight is no longer referred to only as a portfolio of methodologies through which organizations may garner a broader vision and probe the future to ascertain potential competitive landscapes but also as a human or organisational competence. Therefore, the research is based on a foresight maturity model developed by Grim (J Futur Stud 13(4):69–80, 2009). The model, besides traditionally associated foresight components such as environmental scanning, takes into consideration such aspects as leadership, collective vision building, and planning. Pilot survey research carried out among 134 production and services enterprises based in the Podlaskie region has allowed us to state that the companies are characterised by low foresight maturity levels. Hence, based on a literature review, two management concepts are suggested as means to increase the level of foresight maturity in companies.

In the transport sector, where change comes with inertia and investments are made with a long term perspective, decision makers need to consider how the future may look like in the very long term. The work presented in this paper is a scenario analysis focusing on the evolution of transport demand towards 2050, aiming to identify related challenges for European industrial and policy players. It follows up on the work of other recent attempts to study the future of transport from a European perspective, integrating findings from these studies, updating new trends and applying a specific scenario analysis methodology relying also on expert consultation. The diversity of the scenarios created unfolds aspects of the future transport system with rather different outcomes on issues like the volume of transport, travel motives, the prevalent spatial scales of transport and logistics, people’s preferences towards different transport attributes, the relevancy of the State versus the private initiative in transport production, the level of competition, or the relative importance of environment and resource scarcity in setting an agenda for innovation and regulations. Beyond the subsequent challenges and opportunities identified in this work, the scenarios developed may be a useful basis for individual actors of distinct backgrounds to build their own specific futures, supporting them in defining strategies for the future.

The accelerated individualization brings immense promises for innovations in technological development, for improvement of the economic and political organization and for creativity in the cultural life of European societies. The expected changes will most probably liberate individuals from constraints in their personal development and realization. Simultaneously, individualization brings about new complexities, uncertainties and controversies. Some of them are relatively easy to manage, given the proper understanding of the challenges and the efficient coping with them. Other uncertainties and controversies are difficult to handle today and bear the potentials of future clashes at various structural levels. The major reason for tensions, conflicts and clashes is rooted in the scarcity of resources. They are never sufficient to fully satisfy the aspirations for individualization of particular individuals or groups of individuals. The current conditions, manifestations, effects and prospects of the global trend of individualization are analyzed in the contexts of employment and governance in Europe.

Terrorism is a clear context of rapid change, greater complexity and genuine uncertainties. A review of the events that have been going on in Europe shows a great evolution of the threat and the continuous emergence of new scenarios, like those represented by “lone actors” and “foreign fighters”. The complexity of the situation is due to the variety of quantitative and qualitative factors involved. Uncertainty is a key characteristic of our societies, generating fears that must be managed by governments and security institutions. Before defining new policies it is needed an analysis of the current situation of the phenomenon and its possible evolution. Critical thinking, loads of imagination, creative foresight and horizon scanning methodologies would be the pillars of the research. Policies are usually led by events and by social perception of risk. We propose a holistic approach that integrates the lessons learned from the past with modern foresight methodologies, intelligence analysis, evidence-based policing, and decision-making models. It is possible to manage our uncertainties in the present, a time and a matter in which perhaps we feel lost, but we must be sure that we are walking in a correct direction.

Producing foresight knowledge frequently requires both evidence and creativity based expertise. This paper offers assessment of an electronic expert Group Support System (named «E-lab») facilitating efficient foresight knowledge production by using and coalescing a series of quantitative and qualitative methods and techniques, challenging the need for better understanding of foresight methodology assumptions and options. Observations and assessments of the E-lab methodology have been made in several expert workshops conducted both at the regional, national and European level over a ten years’ period (2003–2013) and across a series of foresight themes; e.g. European hydrogen society, Nordic addiction policy, National knowledge policy, Images of addiction and lifestyles in Europe, and University future governance. This methodology research adds to the body of knowledge on the effects of virtual group meetings encompassing a mixed method information platform often generated and shared in expert foresight exercises.

The purpose of the research is to provide a common multi-client platform as a base for further applied foresight work in the packaging sector. It aims to be a reference for a future-oriented strategic dialogue and a platform for strategic business development. The ambition with the research is not to provide an accurate forecast, but rather to initiate an improved preparedness for and active influence on future developments. This is done by mapping and analyzing general trends and drivers in society. The potential packaging implications of those trends and drivers are then evaluated to highlight potential future demands, opportunities and threats for packaging. Methods include participatory workshops/focus groups with invited experts and users. Thus, this article provides results based on participatory foresight and Focus Group methodology. With a systematic and participatory process, a medium to long–term vision building is targeted to mobilize joint actions and influence current decision making.

Debates about the future are an essential medium of modern societies’ self-understanding and governance. In this context, future studies and reflections are frequently advising decision-making processes. But the considerable diversity of statements about the future and the divergence which often becomes apparent regarding the prospects of the future threaten the possibility of delivering the desired orientation. The more divergent the envisioned futures, the more providing reliable orientation might be without any chance of success. Against this background the aim of this paper is to distinguish three different modes of orientation which can be delivered by future studies and reflections. The mode 1 orientation corresponds to the decision-theoretical model: Statements about the future are interpreted as a reliable framework into which decisions and actions have to fit as good as possible. If future studies result in strongly diverse statements (e.g. in the field of energy scenarios), orientation is only possible in a mode 2 understanding: the futures form a set of diverse possibilities within which some “robust” strategies for action might be identified. But what is beyond this distinction? If futures would completely diverge between, so to speak, paradise and apocalypse, even the mode 2 approach would no longer work (this case applies to some recent debates on new and emerging sciences and technologies). For this case I would like to suggest a ‘mode 3’ type orientation: even diverging future studies’ results can be made subject to a ‘hermeneutics’ of the present, where we can learn about ourselves from the diversity, variety and divergence of statements about the future. What we can learn from this consideration that there are extremely different ways to benefit from reflections on the future. Their feasibility depends on an epistemological issue: do images of the future in a certain context converge as soon as more reliable knowledge is fed in, or is diversity or divergence persistent?

The contribution at hand puts forward the notion of “irritation expertise”: knowing how to push others into a direction not chosen voluntarily. This kind of knowledge, I will argue, is of particular importance when players in policy contexts try to influence each other by providing future-oriented knowledge that is inherently uncertain. Yet, it is striking that comparatively little attention has been drawn to the question how to reach specific addressees; this is what media studies and conversation analysis call “recipient design”. Presenting the example of ProPublica, a US investigative journalism newsroom, illustrates what irritation expertise as instrument for policy development and strategic reasoning means. ProPublica deals with very different formats—from research reports to comic strips—depending on whose behavior it intends to change—from decision-makers to the (general) public. Discussing what Futures Research may learn from this practice concludes this contribution.