From Technology Foresight / Forecasting

to Science & Technology Policy: an Israeli Perspective

World Futures Studies Federation - XVII World Conference

"Many Cultures, One World -- Local Development and Globalisation"
Brasov, Romania, September 5 - 9, 2001

Aharon Hauptman and Yair Sharan

Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting (ICTAF)

at Tel-Aviv University, Israel

Abstract

Some examples are presented from ICTAF’s recent experience in Technology Foresight studies and their
importance as a tool to assist the shaping of Science and Technology policy in Israel. One example deals
with Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NST) - a fascinating field that caught the interest of the Israeli
scientific community in the late nineties. An extensive stdy on NST was completed by ICTAF in 1997, and
after a short period of “incubation” several realization steps have followed it.

A second major project was “Science and Technology Forecast Towards the 21ST Century” – a Delphi-type
survey conducted during 1999-2000, in order to support the process of shaping the national science policy.
Some highlights of the findings are included in this presentation. Following the analysis of the survey
findings, brainstorming activity has been carried out regarding the appropriate continuation of the foresight
process.

The importance, advantages and limitations of the Delphi-type survey are discussed, as well as issues
related to the integration of foresight into the process of policy shaping.

1. Introduction: Technology Foresight, Forecasting and Assessment

According to the current thinking in Europe, as reflected by a recent study*** for the European
Commission’s Joint Research Centre, there are subtle but important differences between the concepts of
Technology Foresight, Forecasting and Assessment. Technology Forecasting, as understood in the
context of that study, is the continuous monitoring of particular technological developments leading to an
early identification of promising applications and an assessment/validation of their potentials. Technology
Foresight deals with broader future trends focusing on socio-economic implications of technology
developments. Technology Assessment also deals with the impact of technologies on society, but
focuses more on the examination of norms, values, and risks. (Holtmannspötter et al, 2001).

Naturally, there are overlaps between the three concepts, as illustrated in the following figure. It also should
be noted that there is no worldwide consensus regarding the above definitions. For example, according to
a well-known definition adopted by the OECD, Technology Foresight is “Systematic attempts to look into
the longer-term future of science, technology, economy and society with a view to identify emerging generic
technologies likely to yield the greatest economic and/or social benefits” (Martin, 1996). (It seems that the
OECD does not make a special distinction between Foresight and Forecasting.) Regardless the precise
definitions, the purpose of all the above approaches and their respective methodologies is to serve as tools
for decision makers.

***Performed by VDI (Germany), with contributions from CEA (France), VTT(Finland) and ICTAF (Israel)
 Source: Holtmannspötter et al, 2001

2. Foresight/ Forecasting as tools for Policy Making

From a national (or international) point of view, the main purpose of Technology Foresight, Forecasting and
Assessment is to support policy making with the aim of ensuring the knowledge base and the technological
infrastructure that are necessary for progress and for improving the life quality. In a dynamically changing
world, these activities are therefore perceived (at least in theory) as a continuous process of systematic
debate on the opportunities and desires concerning the Future, and the implied present decisions.
In many countries the Delphi method was extensively employed in such a process during the 90’s
(sometimes together with other methods), for example in UK (’95), Thailand (’96), Japan (’97), Germany
(’98), Austria (’98), Spain (’99), Hungary (’99) and Israel (2000). The method is based on an iterative
interaction among a group of experts, through repeatedly circulated questionnaires, until their responses
converge to a reasonable consensus (usually two rounds are sufficient). The Austrian example of the Delphi
process was particularly interesting, because it was strictly policy oriented, and employed a “Decision
Delphi” accompanied by a matching “Sociocultural Delphi” (Tichy, 1999). The participation of the science
and technology community in the process is important for its success, and for the assimilation and
realization of the resulting policy. However, it seems that in practice the “translation” of the Delphi results
into policy decisions is not straightforward, as was especially evident in the Israeli case. This issue is
addressed in section 4 below.
 3. Test case (a): Evolution of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NST) Activities in
Israel

Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (NST) is one of the emerging and exciting fields that caught the interest
of the Israeli scientific community in the late nineties. NST deals with the creation of materials, devices and
systems through the manipulation of matter on the nanometer scale – at the level of atoms, molecules and
supramolecular structures.

In the early 90’s, only some low-profile uncoordinated research (by individual researchers) could be
identified in NST areas. However, ICTAF – as part of its continuous monitoring of emerging technologies –
started to alert the governmental departments about the potential of NST. These “early warnings” created
the basis for an extensive ICTAF study commissioned by the Israeli government in order to evaluate the
field. The main goals were to present the state of the art of the field, to map the existing initial activities in
Israel, and to evaluate the development trends and potential applications. The study was completed in the
beginning of 1997. After this a short period of “incubation” followed, during which some activities have been
done in order to disseminate the information on NST and to carry out further evaluations:

 Workshop with ICTAF researchers, government officials, and university scientists.

 Lectures in various forums, growing interest of the media; articles in newspapers
 Technology Foresight Delphi-type survey, in which NST topics were included

Several significant realization steps have followed this “incubation” period:

· Establishment of NST research centers in four universities

· Strategic research programs launched by the Ministry of Science in which NST topics
were selected as areas of national priorities
· Some industrial R&D efforts and start-ups.

As part of the preparation steps taken in order to launch the NST center at Tel-Aviv University, an
International Symposium on NST was held in May 2000 by Tel-Aviv University and the Institute of
Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe, followed by a workshop on NST during an International Conference on
Current Trends in Science and Hi-Tech in November 2000. In these symposia several main issues for
future research were identified as well as potential research collaborations.

It would be presumptuous to claim that decisions regarding the implementation actions were based only
on ICTAF’s studies, and even that the whole process was systematic long-range planning based on
Technology Foresight/Forecasting/Assessment. Probably the actions were influenced by the fact that
NST became “fashionable” worldwide, and the prefix “nano” became a buzzword. If a systematic
foresight process would exist in Israel, perhaps the “early warnings” would ring the bell much earlier.
However, ICTAF studies undoubtedly contributed to the awareness of the potential and importance of
NST.

4. Test Case (b): The Israeli Technology Foresight Survey

The Israeli Technology Foresight Survey has been conducted (by ICTAF with the Neaman Institute) during
the years 1999-2000, following the initiative of the Ministry of Science. A Delphi-type methodology was
adopted.

The survey consisted of large variety of topics in 12 science/technology fields, which importance was
identified as significant for the long-term future of Israel. Most topics were adopted from a similar survey
that was carried out in Japan in 1997, with some additions and omissions based on the recommendations
of the steering committee of the project and other advisory experts. The 12 fields of the survey were:

 Information  Materials
 Communication  Electronics
 Resources and Energy  Production
 Health Care  Environment
 Life Science  Urbanization and Construction
 Agriculture  Transportation

In the first round of the survey a special questionnaire was formulated for each field. Each questionnaire
included around 80 topics (962 topics total). Each topic described a future technological development, in a
time frame of the forthcoming 30 years. For the second round about 25 leading topics were selected in
each field, based on the results of the first round. The purpose of the second round was to validate the first
round results regarding the selected topics, and to reach a reasonable consensus among the respondents.
349 experts participated in the first round, and 376 in the second round. Every participant received one of
the 12 questionnaires, according to his/her field of expertise.

The experts were asked the following questions regarding every topic:

(a) Anticipated year of realization. (d) Influence on the quality of life.

(b) Degree of importance. (e) relative advantage for Israel
(c) Prospects of business realization in Israel. f) constraints on realization)

The answers on questions (e) and (f) revealed a high consensus in the first round: in almost all of the topics
the indicated relative advantage for Israel was scientific competence and human power quality, and the
constraints on realization were technical and financial. Based of the answers to questions (b), (c) and (d),
a “priority index” (an average of the indices of importance, business prospects, and life quality) was
calculated for each topic, as a possible tool for prioritization of the topics in every field.

The second round showed a convergence toward a consensus in most topics, represented by the narrowing
range of distribution of the realization years, and by the increasing priority indices. (It should be noted that
many interesting long-term developments were not included in the second round, because they did not
achieve a high priority index in the first round.) As an example, we present in the next section the survey
results concerning NST-related forecasts.

NST Topics in the Survey

NST can be viewed as a “cross-field” area in the survey, because NST-related topics appeared in several
fields, such as Electronics, Materials, Production and Life Sciences, as shown in the following table.
 Materials Time Priority Impor- Business Life
tance
(median) Index Prospects Quality
Mass-synthesizing of Fullerenes (D) 2010 39 48 32 36
Control of supra-molecular structure 2010 43 61 29 39
of polymers (D)
Manufacturing diamond fibers (D) 2020 56 71 44 52
Control structure of interfaces at the 2011 58 81 45 47
atomic level (D)
Nanocomposites with parts in the 2009 57 58 50 38
order of 10 – 100 A (PU)
Composites with controlled structure 2015 59 75 45 58
at the molecular level (PU)
Electronics
Technology for manipulating single 2015 50 63 39 49
atoms & molecules (D)
Mass-processing of patterns with 2007 60 74 46 60
width of 10 Nm (PU)
Single atom switches (D) 2017 51 68 36 50
Biosensors capable of identifying 2010 68 75 64 64
single molecules (PU)
Production
Impact of techniques that control 2020 70 80 70 58
silicon structures at the atomic level
felt in all aspects of production
Super-functional materials (by 2030 66 78 40 70
molecular control techniques) (WU)
Life Sciences
Biodevices: Protein resistors, 2010 64 78 61 54
biochips (D)
Diagnostic & Treatment 2015 74 97 52 73
micromachines traveling inside the
body (D)
Synthesizing living cells (D) 2020 33 48 17 35
Self-assembling, self-recovering 2022 56 64 50 54
devices (D)

(D)- development (PU) – practical use (WU) – widespread use

Difficulties and problems

Our experience in the Israeli survey revealed several problems and difficulties:

(a) Answering the questionnaires was tedious and time consuming – resulting in a low rate of responses
(this was one of the reasons to reduce the number of questions in the second round).
(b) There were many overlaps between several fields of the survey (mainly in Information, Communications
and Electronics).

(c) The degree of expertise of respondents in a particular field varies from topic to topic (therefore in some
topics the number of respondents with high expertise was rather low).

(d) It seems that respondents tend sometimes to underestimate the importance of topics in those cases
when the realization time is in a rather far future, probably because these topics are considered as “exotic”.

(e) Many people are not familiar with the Delphi method, and are rather skeptical (if not hostile) regarding
its reliability and usefulness.

5. From Technology Foresight to Policy – the Israeli Lesson

Following the analysis of the survey findings, thinking work has been carried out regarding the appropriate
continuation of the foresight process in order to shape a national science and technology policy. The main
recommendations were:

· To form expert panels (“meta teams”) in selected attractive areas, in order to

identify national priority issues.
· To distribute a special new questionnaire among selected leading experts and
policy makers, in order to identify priority topics in “cross-field” interdisciplinary
areas, such as nanotechnologies, robotics, genetic technologies, recycling
technologies, applications of information & communication technologies
(Information Society), etc.

As stated before, the adoption of the Delphi results by decision makers and their “translation” into policy-
shaping was far from being straightforward. The large-scale technology foresight survey described above
was a first of its kind undertaken by the Israeli government. The skepticism of some of the decision makers
was perhaps natural, but nevertheless it was an obstacle in adopting the process. An effort has been made
to convince other ministries (besides the Ministry of Science), to make use of the results as inputs to their
plans. So far the success was very limited. However, there are decision makers in some ministries (for
example Energy, Environment, Communications) that support the method. Their support is beginning to
create a “bottom-up” process that may influence the policy of national priority setting.

It should be noted that the Technology Foresight survey generated a substantial database of technology
topics that can serve decision makers according to their specific needs and responsibilities.

To conclude, our experience shows that presenting the survey results to the decision makers is not enough.
More confidence of decision makers in the method should be ensured. The findings should be processed
further and additional activities such as panel discussions are necessary in order to provide the required
basis for informed prioritization and policy-making. Based on the experience gained during the Israeli Delphi
survey, a scheme of a “Pyramid Process” (see figure) was suggested, in order to reach a set of leading top-
priority science/technology topics that should be advanced by a national policy.

The real trial will be 3 - 4 years from now: it remains to be seen if the Ministry of Science will continue the
process, including a further study in order to update of the forecasts in light of the rapidly changing
technological environment.
 The Pyramid Process

References:

“Technolgy Forecasting- Experiences and Challenges” - ESTO Workshop, VDI

Technology Center, Future Technology Division, Duesseldorf, 31 January 2001

P. Gavigan and F. Scapolo, “A Comparison of National Foresight Exercises”, Foresight Vol. 1 No. 6, p.
495-517, Dec.1999

A. Hauptman and E. Tapuhi , “Nanotechnology - Trends and Potential Applications”

Part 1: ICTAF, 1996; Part 2: ICTAF, 1997 (in Hebrew)

A. Hauptman, D. Kohn, M. Markus, T. Soffer and Y. Sharan, “SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

FORECAST TOWARDS THE 21ST CENTURY: An Israeli Delphi Survey”, ICTAF and S.
Naeman Institute, March 2001 (in Hebrew, with English summary)

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