Diana Mangalagiu: Integrated Foresight Approaches for Transformative Policies and Anticipatory Governance

To help navigate current and future complexity, uncertainty, scarcity and disruptive change, while effectively delivering on their mandate, organisations could benefit from establishing institutionalised approaches to strategic foresight. This echoes the growing interest and demand for foresight at a global level, such as the United Nations reform agenda which calls for all UN agencies and member states to engage foresight practices more deeply and apply the derived insights to address global systemic risks. However, (long-term) planning and reactive crisis management are still deeply entrenched in today’s current strategies of most organisations, public agencies, and governments. In this talk, reflecting on over two decades of strategic foresight engagement with various public and private sector organisations and building on concrete examples, Diana Mangalagiu discussed how integrated foresight approaches can avoid locking into the present and help building transformative policies and governance and developing an anticipatory and future-oriented culture.