Seminar ‘UK Practices of Regional Foresight Studies aimed at Technology Modernization’ by Gordon Ollivere
On September 29th, 2011, a seminar by Gordon Ollivere on ‘UK Practices of Regional Foresight Studies aimed at Technology Modernization’ took place at the HSE. The event was organized by the HSE ISSEK Laboratory for Science and Technology Studies (LST).
Gordon Ollivere is director of the non-commercial consulting company RTC North Ltd. (Great Britain), which specializes in business planning, technology audit, innovative corporate development, intellectual property management, marketing studies etc. He is a leading expert in the methodology and organization of Foresight studies, as well as technology transfer.
Ollivere told the audience about the development of regional socio-economic development strategies with application of Foresight methods in Great Britain. He gave an example of the first regional Foresight programme in Great Britain, which RTC North started working on in 1996. The programme has been active for 14 years and is one of the best examples of its kind in Europe. The speaker also mentioned the problem of the choice of methods of economic development management in regions with traditional sectors which are stagnating. Particularly, the speaker described the use of various Foresight methods for specific companies, economic sectors and clusters.
In the next part of the presentation the speaker told the audience about Foresight activities aimed at supporting private companies and involving analysis of the impact of different factors on company’s strengths and weaknesses. In addition to this, through the example of the Gateshead Millennium Bridge (Northern England) he demonstrated a way to support non-technology innovations in an urban environment, which promote the development of enterprises around infrastructure objects.
In the end of the seminar Gordon Ollivere suggested that participants try their hands in building roadmaps of socio-economic development for a separate territorial entity with a planning horizon of 10 years.