From national forecasting to regional foresight: new dynamic approaches confronting increasing complexity. Some evidences from Europe

During the last decades a transition occurred from a mainly hierarchic capitalism to a flexible one, with dynamics markets both local and global and intangible resources. At micro-economic level, this has caused a transition from hierarchical organisational models with tangible assets to network organisational models knowledge-based, facing complex and unsettled scenarios. This paper tries to demonstrate that the concepts of Forecasting and Foresight cannot be considered out of this context and of changes occurred in the Strategic Thinking, where the needs for more interdisciplinary views of problems tries to integrate Strategic management and Entrepreneurship into the new concept of Strategic Entrepreneurship. In order to demonstrate this evolution in the approaches, this work analyses some significant experiences of transition from Technology Forecasting to Regional Foresight in Europe. From this analysis comes out as the traditional mechanistic approach to Strategic Thinking influenced the first experiences of Forecasting, characterised by a national outlook, the research of linear cause-effect relationships and of an objective vision of facts. Instead the more recent dynamic non-linear approaches are influencing the replacement of Forecasting with Foresight and, more recently, with Regional Foresight, where the complexity of phenomena is kept more into account, while the research of simple linear relationships and of objective visions of facts are given up