There are some key elements embedded in
CGEE's methodological approach. First and most
important, stakeholders must be involved in the
exercise from the very beginning. They must feel
comfortable and confident to participate in all
phases, irrespective to the complexities involved.
To have them engaged, CGEE’s team must listen,
interpret and understand the client’s needs,
desires and preoccupations and to describe and
translate - to all participants, in an understandable
way - the main objectives and strategic goals taking
into consideration possibilities, opportunities and
different perspectives.
Second, introducing collective intelligence over
all phases of the process in a systematic manner
is the key for achieving success (Glenn, 2010).
In other words, collaboration, interaction and
communication are all important, as well as
attempts to design and plan the foresight exercise
with a sense of anticipation, pointing out the most
difficult points and where revisions of mindsets are
expected.
The foresight exercises conducted by CGEE
comprise three distinct phases, as seen in Figure
1. The Initial Phase establishes the baseline of the
exercise, usually mapping what is going on related
to the main issue. The Main Phase is where most
interpretation of information takes place and
creativity is required at the best of the participant’s
capacity. Studies, scenario planning, workshops,
and electronic tools are applied, among others, in
order to revise and transform mindsets, understand
possible futures associated to the main issues. In
this phase, CGEE intends to build a good decisionmaking
process, making it as comprehensive as
possible. In the Dissemination Phase the main
recommendations are fine-tuned with decision
makers in all their aspects and an implementation
strategy is first designed.
This topic describes briefly how CGEE recently
conducted an organizational foresight exercise for the
main federal ST&I funding agency in Brazil – FINEP,
also known as the Brazilian Innovation Agency
(Coelho, et al., 2011). FINEP's mission is to promote
the economic and social development in Brazil through
public funding of science, technology and innovation
in businesses, universities, technological institutions
and other public and private organizations.
The challenge of promoting out-of-the-box thinking
was very complex in this case. It required a broad
exercise of exploring future perspectives and a
systematic process of questioning "what is going on" and
"what should we do differently", with the participation
of staff and a range of potential beneficiaries and
stakeholders. Figure 2 presents the main ideas and
designed strategy on how out-of-the-box thinking was
implemented at the agency.
The turning point to truly revise its mindset was when
FINEP was prepared to visualize its challenges and
a feasible strategic position for itself in the future. In
other words, to define a challenging, yet successful,
Future Vision required a strategy which, on one hand,
should balance the knowledge related to the present
and some relevant future possibilities, and on the other
hand, should compare, contrast and merge the internal
and external views.
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