Sep 21, 2010

Articles in journals

Mendonça, S., Caraça, J., Kaivo-oja, J.

forthcoming

25

Foresight is a complex set of methods intended to assist policy in becoming more adaptive and forward-oriented in an increasingly unpredictable environment. ‘Weak signal’ analysis is a tool that has the potential to facilitate the convergence between real-time decision-making and changing circumstances of the real world. ‘Weak signals’ are advanced indicators that precede significant events and changes in the rate and direction of trends. These indications of future change represent a challenge to dominant mental models. Thus, the practical significance of weak signal information is that it can be transformed into meaningful knowledge for policy action. However, the value of this information does not materialises automatically; realising this potential requires the articulation of a collective cognitive framework by which weak signals can be identified, assessed and acted upon. Ignoring such signals on breakpoints in past tendencies or structural change in environmental trends may have catastrophic consequences for the performance of socio-economic systems at organisational, regional, national and continental levels.