This paper was presented at The XXIII ISPIM Conference – Action for Innovation: Innovating

from Experience – in Barcelona, Spain on 17-20 June 2012. The publication is available to ISPIM
members at www.ispim.org.

ICT-Tools in Foresight – A Delphi Study about Future

Developments

Jonas Keller*
Institute for Futures Studies and Knowledge Management, EBS
Business School, Konrad-Adenauer-Ring 15, 65187 Wiesbaden,
Germany.
E-mail: jonas.keller@ebs.edu

Dr. Heiko von der Gracht

E-mail: heiko.vondergracht@ebs.edu

Dr. Rixa Kroehl

E-mail: rixa.kroehl@ebs.edu

Christoph Markmann
E-mail: christoph.markmann@ebs.edu

* Corresponding author

Abstract: Foresight is increasingly implemented with the support of

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools. Currently, many
different tools are developed and tested so that a rising number of foresight
methods is mirrored in ICT-tools. We conducted a real-time Delphi study in
order to project further development in the area and to structure the debate as
well as the literature of ICT-based foresight tools. We find that ICT will likely
be a driver of further quality and efficiency improvements in foresight
processes. Rising computational power, better communication and
collaboration possibilities as well as a trend towards more integrated multi-
method tools will contribute to a shift of focus in foresight. Yet overall,
foresight will remain a creative and human-centered activity with ICT-tools
only serving supportive functions.

Keywords: Foresight; Futures Studies; ICT; Delphi; Group Wisdom; System

1 Introduction
Research shows that long-term planning increases the profitability of business enterprises
(Violani et al., 2011). Engaging in corporate foresight keeps flexibility for future
developments and provides companies with the ability to react timely to weak signals
(Rohrbeck, 2010). However, decision-makers are presented with ever more data and
information, creating a need for supporting ICT-tools (Porter and Cunningham, 2005).
Consequently, foresight is now increasingly implemented through ICT-tools: Trend

1
 This paper was presented at The XXIII ISPIM Conference – Action for Innovation: Innovating
from Experience – in Barcelona, Spain on 17-20 June 2012. The publication is available to ISPIM
members at www.ispim.org.

extrapolation with statistical packages is common, consultancies offer trend databases or

their own scenario software packages and the advantages of the Internet are increasingly
discovered for foresight methods (Gheorghiu et al., 2009). Furthermore, leading futurists
see diverse potential in ICT-based foresight tools. Gordon and Glenn (2005) cite
internationalization, indexing and brain research as examples.
At the moment - as a look at a list of scenario techniques composed by Bishop (2007)
shows - many exercises are still implemented manually. Yet, at the same time Banuls and
Salmeron (2011) see developments towards Foresight Support Systems (FSS) and note
progress from academic thinking in foresight towards the actual employment of
supporting software. This contradiction exemplifies an incoherently developing field. We
aim to add structure to the field by narrowing down the future role of ICT in foresight.
We conducted an online, real-time Delphi study among internationally renowned
strategists and foresight experts.
In the following we will present a literature review, by which we then developed 20
Delphi projections until 2020 which focus on (1) foresight data and process quality; (2)
foresight data and knowledge origin; and (3) the nature of tasks, ICT-based foresight
tools will be used for. The analysis of this data contributes to the systematization of
research in ICT-based foresight tools by clarifying directions, aims and limitations of the
discipline.

2 Literature Review

The ultimate goal of ICT-based foresight tools – as it is with all Decision Support
Systems (DSS) in general – is to arrive at valid decisions more efficiently (Shim et al.,
2002). Because development in DSS for qualitative processes tends to lag that of more
operational and managerial tasks (Courtney, 2001), many authors believe that software
can significantly improve process efficiency, outcome quality and knowledge exchange
for qualitative processes such as foresight (e.g. Vaccaro et al., 2010). As an example,
real-time Delphi studies demonstrate that improvements in efficiency and quality often
go hand-in-hand: while the original goal is to increase the efficiency upon the paper-
based method (e.g. Gordon and Pease, 2006, Gnatzy et al., 2011), the possible inclusion
of more participants may also increase the results’ quality. This is noted by Dalal et al.
(2011) whose Expertlens system employs many elements of the Delphi method. Data-
mining follows a related approach. ICT dramatically decreases the resources necessary
for searching any given set of data and the possibility of searching larger – and more
diverse sets – increases the reliability of such searches. In this way, data and web mining
have e.g. been used in the prediction of bankruptcies (see Olson et al., 2012) or for
technological forecasting (Lee et al., 2012).
The general idea behind these improvements in quality is the application of the
wisdom of the crowds theory (cf. Surowiecki, 2004). It builds on the idea that group
judgment is generally more accurate than individual judgment (e.g. Sniezek and Henry,
1989), i.e. that incorporating more diverse data will increase the accuracy of predictions.
Besides the already mentioned methods, so far prediction markets constitute the main
ICT-based foresight tool that utilizes crowd wisdom. They are designed to aggregate
asymmetrically distributed knowledge among traders along the Hayek-hypothesis of
efficient markets (Hayek, 1945), so that the market price of one stock expresses the
aggregated opinion of all participants. There have been many academic publications
about prediction markets (e.g. Wolfers and Zitzewitz, 2004, Berg et al., 2008) and they
have also been successfully transferred to the business world (e.g. Ho and Chen, 2007).
Retrieving the knowledge of outsiders can also be more direct and problem oriented.
For instance, Heger and Rohrbeck (2011) suggest involving direct stakeholders, such as

2
suppliers and customers in foresight processes. This compares to the concept “Open
Foresight” – analogous to “Open Innovation” – introduced by Daheim and Uerz (2008).
Such approaches would most likely involve ICT-tools. For example, Rinne (2004)
proposes an electronic market for technological forecasting that could be classified as
both Open Foresight and Open Innovation.
A further approach to raising the quality of foresight data and results is the
combination of multiple tools and methods in integrated tools. Banuls and Turoff (2011)
improve the quality of their scenario process by using the Delphi method, Cross Impact
Analysis and interpretive structural modelling. Together with Salmeron (2007), Banuls
combines the multicriteria and scenario methods and in a later publication describes a
more complicated FSS which includes a databases, communications, scenario software
and a prediction market (Bañuls and Salmeron, 2011). Von der Gracht et al. (2011) work
on a trend database for quantitative and qualitative data that can be further worked with
in a digital Future Workshop and assessed with a prediction market application. Other
trend databases that offer further features for analysis include the “iknow” project
(iknow, 2012) and “shaping tomorrow” (Shaping Tomorrow, 2012).
Because a main strength of futures research is its capacity to stimulate creative
solution finding (Coates, 2010), research in transferring more creative methods to ICT-
tools is also ongoing. Robinson et al. (2011) develop participatory backcasting software,
while Comes et al. (2011) use interactive decision maps, thereby introducing a graphical
component to futures-oriented decision-making software. By designing “Creative
Foresight Spaces”, Heinonen and Hiltunen (2012) demonstrate that ICT can also be used
to stimulate futures-oriented creativity during everyday life.
More sophisticated ICT-based foresight methods are also discussed in the literature.
Agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) has its own stream of literature. E.g.
Macal and North (2010) attest to its potential capability of supporting decision-making.
Farmer and Foley (2009) argue that a model-economy would help in anticipating future
effects of present policies. Similarly, Ahmed et al. (2010) suggest including modelling in
scenario software. Even further advanced, automatic decision making is still confined to
short-term decision making. Davenport and Harris (2005) list many operative examples,
but add that automatic decision making is likely to move further up the organizational
hierarchy und will thus likely become more long-term. However, automation of long-
term decision-making might only be the result of progress in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
However, only a small minority of experts believes in substantial progress related to AI
until 2020 (Baum et al., 2011).
Finally we are also interested, how progress in ICT-based foresight tools affects the
manner in which foresight processes are interested. At the moment, corporate foresight is
often project-based and implemented by consultancies. Only few companies have
continuous and self-implemented foresight processes. Rohrbeck and Gemünden (2008)
see a combination of continuous processes and issue-driven projects as best-practice. Yet,
easy to use ICT tools might make continuous processes conducted in-house the common
approach. Of course, this would impact the existing market structure considerably.

3 Methodology

As an iterative and structured group process, the Delphi method has proven to provide
accurate forecasts for many topics (Parenté and Anderson-Parenté, 2011). The Delphi
technique relies on three basic assumptions of judgment (Rowe and Wright, 2001): (1)
group results are more accurate than individual results; (2) experts groups perform better
than non-expert groups; and (3) controlled and anonymous feedback lets individual
opinions converge. In this survey we used a real-time form of the method (Gnatzy et al.,
 This paper was presented at The XXIII ISPIM Conference – Action for Innovation: Innovating
from Experience – in Barcelona, Spain on 17-20 June 2012. The publication is available to ISPIM
members at www.ispim.org.

2011), posing 20 projections about ICT’s role for foresight until 2020 (Table 1). The
projections were developed by the project team and were double checked by five external
experts from academia and industry. Participants rated the projections’ expected
probability (EP) on a scale of 1-100 as well as the impact on the “foresight industry” (I)
and the desirability (D) of the projections’ occurrence on a 5-point Likert-scale.
Participants had the opportunity to note arguments referring to either dimension of all
projections. Feedback about the group opinion was provided immediately via a boxplot
showing mean and inter-quartile range (IQR) and via the display of the other experts’
arguments. The survey was open for ten weeks and open to re-login for an unlimited
number of times.
Most important for the reliability of the Delphi is the selection of the right experts
(Welty, 1972, Rowe et al., 2005). Diverse expert groups may provide for the most
accurate results (Kerr and Tindale, 2011). We accordingly included proven foresight
experts from different backgrounds: universities, application-oriented research
institutions, foresight consultancies, industrial enterprises and administrative institutions.
We invited the editorial boards of the discipline’s key academic journals1, the members
of important future-oriented networks2, the speakers of various foresight-oriented
conferences worldwide as well as leading consultants of the foresight business.
Additionally the Delphi study was pre-announced at the conferences 2011 World Future
in Vancouver and the 4th International Seville Conference on Future-oriented Technology
Analysis in July 2011.

8%

15%
34%

30%
13%

Academia Applied Research Consultants

Industry Associations/Politics

Figure 1 1 Delphi participants by source of expertise.

Overall we invited 952 experts. All invitations were sent out via email and experts
were reminded to participate for up to two times. The participation rate was 18.6 percent:
177 experts from 38 countries3 completed the survey. Figure 1 shows that the
professional background of the participants was well mixed. Overall 2.9 logins and 11.8
written comments per participant (for a total of 2,082) indicate high involvement among
all participants. Evaluating the projections, we calculated the final means of EP, I and D
as well as the conversion rate from initial to final EP values.

1
Strategic Management Journal, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Long Range
Planning, Foresight and Futures
2
Oxford Futures Forum, World Future Society, Cambridge Futures Thinking Seminar, Millennium
Project, Club of Rome, Global Business Network
3
Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark,
Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Mexico,
Netherlands, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania,
Thailand, Turkey, UAE, UK, USA, Venezuela

4
4 Findings and Discussion

The detailed results for all projections are summarized in Table 1. The results show two
things clearly: First, it seems very likely that support of foresight processes with ICT-
tools will increase and new tools will continue to be developed. Second, the focus of
ICT-based foresight tools will shift from gathering futures-relevant data – e.g. via a
Delphi study – to interpreting this data in order to derive strategies or to recommend
specific actions. This indicates that by 2020, ICT may have helped to let cutting-edge
users of foresight technology focus on more tangible and specific results compared with
today’s more general approach of future readiness. This should most importantly be due
to increases in process efficiency and data quality, which alleviate today’s challenges
associated with identifying reliable future-relevant data. In the comments section of the
Delphi the experts argue that progress in data- and web-mining as well as more efficient
collaboration possibilities will free up time for interpretive tasks, which is so far spent on
menial labour. Additionally, the combination of various foresight methods in integrated
tools will likely provide a cost-effective push for improved data and output quality,
because employing multiple methods will yield triangulation effects. Less clear are the
further effects of complex modelling and ABMS in ICT-based foresight tools: the results
of projection 14 suggest that only modest progress can be achieved until 2020. Yet the
controversial nature of the debate shows that eventual breakthroughs in this field are
regarded as a particularly important driver of ICT in foresight.

Table 1 Delphi projections and results

No Projection (P) EP I D IQR CV
1 2020: Information and communication technology
(ICT) has revolutionized the practice of futures 63.4 3.7 3.7 30 -7.9%
research.
2 2020: The demand for ICT solutions in futures
72.0 3.7 3.6 20 -6.8%
studies has grown significantly over the past decade.
3 2020: The product variety in ICT-based foresight -
76.3 3.6 3.7 20
tools has increased. 14.2%
4 2020: Strategic decision making without support of
ICT-based foresight tools has become an exception 51.1 3.4 3.2 35 -2.7%
in the business context.
5 2020: The efficiency of future-oriented planning
processes could be significantly enhanced by the 65.2 3.6 3.7 30 -7.6%
application of ICT- based foresight tools.
6 2020: The quality of foresight data for future-
oriented planning could be significantly enhanced by 63.3 3.6 4.0 30 -2.4%
the application of ICT-based foresight tools.
7 2020: The reliance on individual expert knowledge
has diminished while the trust in group wisdom and 53.3 3.4 3.0 25 -4.9%
collective intelligence is emerging.
8 2020: Futures studies have become very popular due
to innovative ICT applications (e.g. web-based, real- 56.2 3.6 3.7 30 -6.0%
time, social media).
9 2020: Open foresight has become standard practice
49.0 3.6 3.7 20 -6.9%
in business.
10 2020: Internationally recognized quality standards
45.1 3.2 3.6 30 -4.4%
have been established in futures research
11 2020: An intelligent interconnection of ICT-based 62.4 3.6 3.8 30 -1.9%
 This paper was presented at The XXIII ISPIM Conference – Action for Innovation: Innovating
from Experience – in Barcelona, Spain on 17-20 June 2012. The publication is available to ISPIM
members at www.ispim.org.

foresight tools (e.g. integrated software packages,

harmonization of interfaces) allows for higher quality
in future-oriented planning processes than individual
ICT-based foresight applications.
12 2020: The reliance on ICT-based futures research has
increased the amount of manipulated future-relevant 61.4 3.5 2.1 30 -4.9%
data.
13 2020: Wise interpretation of futures-oriented
knowledge, rather than its availability, has become
the key challenge in the field of futures studies. 78.5 3.8 4.1 20 -10.7

14 2020: ICT solutions have improved the ability to

anticipate future developments of complex systems. 55.2 3.7 4.0 30 -5.7%

15 2020: Automated decision-making by means of ICT-

-
based foresight tools has become a standard 31.5 3.2 2.3 20
10.9%
procedure.
16 2020: ICT-based foresight tools have eliminated
problems of scenario transfer into strategy. 32.2 3.3 3.2 25 -8.1%

17 2020: ICT-based foresight tools have largely -

displaced the market for futures consultancy services. 30.4 3.2 2.2 20
17.3%
18 2020: The broader application of ICT in futures
research has increased customers’ need for futures 57.5 3.5 3.3 20 -2.2%
consultancy services.
19 2020: Non-ICT-based futures studies are applied for
niche topics only. 36.3 2.9 2.4 30 -7.7%

20 2020: The governmental surveillance of foresight

communities has increased. 46.6 3.0 2.4 30 -6.8%

IQR: Interquartile range; EP: Probability of occurrence (0-100%); CV: Convergence (% decrease in
standard deviation)
I: Impact (5 pt. Likert scale; 5=very high); D: Desirability (5 pt. Likert scale; 5=very high)

An equally controversial topic is the future of crowd wisdom in ICT-based foresight

tools. P7’s EP of only slightly above 50 percent combined with the neutral desirability
score (For a discussion of the interaction of EP and desirability in Delphi studies see
Ecken et al., 2011) indicates that while the crowd’s importance is expected to grow,
scepticism towards this approach remains high. Additionally, the comments suggest that
even the experts arguing in favour of crowd sourcing applications do not want to discard
of expert knowledge. Consequently we expect a slight increase in crowd sourcing
application (though not as strong as current hype suggests) will lead to a productive mix
of crowd- and expert-based methods in foresight. This finding is bolstered by the medium
EP for a rising popularity of futures study (P8), which suggests that it will not be a
routine task to get non-stakeholders to participate in foresight exercises. Similarly,
involving stakeholders in Open Foresight processes will likely remain the exception
rather than the rule. This continuing reliance on expert knowledge also explains the
experts’ belief in the continued thriving of foresight consultancies. The results show a
clear expectation of ICT-based foresight tools not threatening consultancies’ market
positions and show the possibility that tools may even increase demand for consultancy
services by 2020.

6
 As much as it can be expected that ICT-based foresight will continue to develop, the
prevalence of important decisions that are come by with the help of ICT-based foresight
tools remains less clear. With Klein (2003) reporting that 90 percent of all critical
decisions were arrived at by gut feeling for 2020, a medium EP for P4 suggests that for
many decision-makers ICT-based decision support might not yet be routine. Apart from
tools’ possible deficiencies, it is likely that accountability issues, power politics and
decision makers’ pride stand in the way of objectively helpful decisions support.
Analogously, the experts assign low EPs to the more extreme technologies – automated
decision-making and scenario transfer – surveyed in the Delphi. Their emergence would
go much further in curbing decision-makers’ influence and additionally encounters
scepticism regarding technical feasibility. Because the Delphi results also suggest that
Non-ICT-methods will continue to be used for all topics and disciplines, we feel
confident to say that despite all progress in ICT-tools, foresight will remain to be a
people’s business in 2020.

5 Conclusion

ICT will probably vastly improve foresight process efficiency and foresight data quality.
Consequently, foresight processes should in the future focus more on the derivation of
actions and strategies than on general awareness building. However, in spite of
becoming more important, ICT will be an enabler only. Rather will the human remain to
be the central figure in strategic decision-making for the foreseeable future. But as
supporting tools, ICT-tools will increasingly be able to contribute by making knowledge
more readily available, facilitating collaboration and helping to overcome human biases.

Acknowledgements

Research supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research in the
scope of its Leading Edge Cluster Initiative (project reference number: 01IC10L18 A),
Joint research partners include Bayer MaterialScience, BrainNet, dilotec, and EBS
Business School.

We also thank all participants of the Delphi survey for their valuable input.

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