As ForeTech project coordinator ARC Fund initiated in cooperation with the CRIMM foundation, Romania, the organization of the first Capacity Building Workshop on Foresight in Bucharest. Teh event took place on January 26, 2004 and targeted the national expert panel on biotechnologies that was set up within a National Strategy Foresight Program of the Romanian government. The panel’s assignment is to elaborate strategies in various areas, one of them being “Biotechnologies and Agriculture, and the Food and Drinks Industries”.
The Romanian Ministry of Education has advised the panel to use the foresight approach as a starting stage in the process of strategy development. This approach is ensured by the active cooperation between the Biotech expert panel and the ForeTech project. The first day of the seminar was structured so as to have presentations on Foresight methodological tools and techniques that were followed by practical sessions with deep involvement of all trainees putting the knowledge acquired into practice. This part of the workshop was moderated by Rafael Popper – representative of PREST (Policy Research in Engineering, Science and Technology), Victoria University of Manchester, UK, and facilitated by Ferenc Kovats from the Hungarian Ministry of Education, Kristina Kadlecikova from the Technology Centre AS CR (the Czech Republic) and Daniela Tchonkova of ARC Fund, Bulgaria.
The second day of the seminar was devoted to presenting the experience of the Central and East European countries, the major share given to the foresight experience of Bulgaria as being identical to Romania in terms of introducing foresight for the first time as a key policy making tool and implementing pilot foresight exercises employing the concept of “learning by doing”. Practical guidelines and advice were also provided to the panel members by the knowledgeable consortium partners from Hungary and the Czech Republic, mainly focusing on the difficulties encountered and the lessons learned. The main purpose of this part of the seminar was to transfer experience and know-how and provoke a dynamic question-and-answer session thus giving the floor to the panellists to interrogate and get familiar with as much partners’ experience as possible.
As result of the first day-and-a-half Capacity Building Workshop on Foresight in Bucharest the panel members of the Romanian Biotech Foresight panel are expected to have acquire practical knowledge on some of the most commonly used foresight tools and techniques (brainstorming, STEEPV, and SWOT analyses) and be able to smoothly implement first stage of the pilot initiative in the field of Biotechologies that is planned to be completed by mid-March, 2004. The second Capacity Building Workshop on Foresight focused on the tools and techniques for development of scenarios is scheduled for the end of March. The entire foresight pilot exercise is supposed to be completed by the end of April, 2004. The Biotech panel is supposed to come out with a number of alternative scenarios on the vision of the future development of Biotechnologies, as well as with a report on the overall work under the foresight exercise and the findings of the panel.
Downloadable files:
1. The STEEPV method – a framework for structured brainstorming; Rafael Popper from PREST, Victoria University of Manchester, UK;
2. SWOT analysis – Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats; Rafael Popper from PREST, Victoria University of Manchester, UK;
3. Implementation of the pilot foresight exercise on Application of Biotechnologies in Agriculture and Food and Drinks Industries in Bulgaria; Daniela Tchonkova, Applied Research and Communications Fund (ARC Fund), Bulgaria;
4. Technology Foresight Program in Hungary; Ferenc Kovats, Ministry of Education of Hungary;
5. Technology Foresight – Experience of the Czech Republic, 1st National Foresight Exercise (2001); Kristina Kadlecikova, Technology Centre AS CR, the Czech Republic.
