An alternative future is here

In this case, Vinnova's mission was to propose technology priorities for Sweden based on the EU's 10 strategic technologies, which include AI, semiconductor, quantum, bio, connectivity, sensor, propulsion, energy, robotics, and materials technology. The technologies' importance for global competitiveness, green transition, and national security would be taken into account.

The question we asked ourselves was how foresight could best complement already established methods of investigation and analysis such as mapping resources and competencies, strengths and weaknesses, extrapolation of historical developments of various variables and monitoring the external environment. Based on this, we came up with three principles that we wanted to adopt:

• Shifting the focus from the technologies themselves to applications, and what benefit or harm they can bring to current and future generations.
• Instead of assuming that the future looks much like today, explore what alternative developments in the world around us should mean for our choices.
• To highlight the underlying assumptions on which the assignment is based, and which are in fact uncertainties whose outcome may have a major impact on whether our choices today turn out to be the right ones.

We conducted workshops with a wide range of actors from different sectors, backgrounds and professions to highlight important use cases or societal systems as we called them, trends beyond technical, benefits and risks, and not least underlying assumptions that can be easy to miss. Based on these, three main scenarios were created that we used in further workshops to shape the discussions that could ultimately form the basis for recommendations.

One of the scenarios was the “Age of Adaptation”: an omnipolar world in which regional power centers have become stronger and more isolated both in a geopolitical sense, but also in terms of trade and international cooperation on climate issues, security and innovation. It was also a world in which demand for climate-preventive goods and services has dramatically decreased in favor of reactive climate action: a world in which climate impacts are managed rather than prevented. Reactions to the Age of Adaptation varied, but many felt that it was too extreme a world and not something to take into account for strategic choices about technology development.

In connection with the outcome of the US election, in my opinion, we have been relegated to the Age of Adaptation in less than a week. The US has made its choice and will probably neither demand nor contribute to green technology for the foreseeable future. Now it is “drill, baby, drill”. The German government has collapsed alongside the weak French government. Unfortunately, things look dark for Ukraine and even brighter for Russia’s vision. And in Sweden we have just stopped a majority of planned offshore wind farms. With an inward-looking US, Taiwan’s chip manufacturing in the shadow of China could be threatened in the near future, while US chips will remain in the US. It took no more than a week for the prioritization of technologies to perhaps be reviewed again with a different focus: semiconductor technology and the EU’s ChipAct feel more relevant. Propulsion and energy technology, unfortunately, less so.

Perhaps there is someone more than me among the approximately 100 people who participated in this technical foresight who is wondering how close our imagination was to reality and how we should use the structured, methodical ability to imagine that foresight entails in a better way in the development of national strategies.. in the future.

Read more about Rise's work with strategic technology areas