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Highlights • Dutch infrastructure providers largely do foresight by themselves. • Foresight is used to connect the long term with the short term. • Dealing with new and different time horizons is an issue. • Foresight should become a process instead of a project. • Foresight and innovation are connected in different ways. Abstract An infrastructure that meets future technological and societal demands is vital to Dutch society, which is why Dutch infrastructure providers look at long-term developments. We explored how they organize and manage their foresight processes by conducting 30 interviews among five different infrastructure providers, showing that to a large extent they carry out these processes themselves in different locations within the organization and only call on external support for specific subjects. They are not too worried about the importance of the short term but instead want to know how they can connect long-term developments to the short term, and try to deal with different time horizons within their organization. They use the foresight studies of other organizations and their search for information is not overly structured. Infrastructure providers have a well-developed sense of their environment, and they realize that their strategic room offers limited freedom and, in terms of foresight, should work together more than they are doing at the moment. Comparing our findings with two theories, we see that their approach to foresight is often adapted to their approach to innovation, that their foresight is organized in a facilitating, stimulating and framing manner, and that it is centralized as well as decentralized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Proposition of a cohesive approach to examine societal scenarios. • Proposition of key indices and legacy of intergenerational yield functions. • Global society has reached a highly alarming degree of overshoot. • Higher degrees of yield signify longer time horizons for Great Transitions. Abstract In light of cutting-edge discussions aimed at fostering a resilient and flourishing global society, this work proposes a cohesive approach to examine societal scenarios vis-à-vis essential precepts for sustainability and stability of Earth's life-giving systems. The approach proposed encompasses a set of key indices for measuring the degree of achievement, parity, overshoot, and yield as well as legacy of intergenerational yield functions for modeling scenarios in three broad evolutionary contours: Barbarization , Conventional World and Great Transitions. The findings of this study emphasize that anthropogenic impacts set in motion by recent and current generations have already instated a critical status of instability for Earth's life-giving systems. Portrayed forecasting scenarios indicate that if lower degrees of yield are assumed to consistently persist into the future, the societal legacy of intergenerational yield will evolve with an increasing speed towards worsening stages of Barbarization. By contrast, portrayed backcasting scenarios reveal that higher degrees of yield signify longer time horizons for Great Transitions towards global sustainability. These results also emphasize that for the purpose of achieving Great Transitions , an urgent and transformative societal change is imperative to ensure a sufficient legacy of intergenerational yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the metaphorical messages and interpretations of futuristic buildings and construction projects, with examples from several parts of the world, especially from Europe and Asia. Based on the research material gathered in the MEDEIA project, some examples of buildings representing various metaphors will be provided together with reflections on their implications and interpretations from an individual and societal point of view. 1 1 The origin of this article derives from the presentation held at the seminar of the Finnish Society for Futures Studies in August 2014 ( Heinonen, 2014 ). The method of causal layered analysis (CLA) is applied in the analysis to deconstruct the messages of the buildings and to illustrate the connections between their manifest appearance and the underlying metaphors. The article addresses two central questions. Firstly, how does a building, in addition to its main functions, act as a messenger and mediator of future-related meanings by embodying different types of metaphors? Secondly, which kinds of buildings present conventional metaphors and used futures, and which kinds of buildings suggest novel metaphors and alternative futures? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper bridges a gap between emergent transition theories and the policy maker facing societal transitions when making long-term policy. Using a two-step approach the abstract concepts are linked to the realm of the policy maker. First the forces underlying transitions are identified and second where they can be found is presented. For this a conceptual map of societal systems, the clover model, is introduced. With the clover model the structures, cultures and practices of societal systems can be found. Furthermore, intermediate changes are systematically treated to track the phases of a transition. These transition diagnostics are supplemented with recommended policy frameworks. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Discusses the development of the theory of synergetics in predicting the course of development and history. Co-evolution of complex social systems; Increasing general and local instability of development.