ÔThe ten national foresight case studies presented, covering a wide-ranging set of themes (research, science and technology, education and training and the environment) and countries, help to underline the practical aspects of using dialogue and participation effectively in foresight exercises. The book is particularly useful in defining the concept of dialogue, debate, interaction and participation and in outlining a range of uses in different foresight contexts. This book constitutes an important contribution to the futures field and will prove an inspiration to those embarking on foresight exercises and similar open, participatory forward-looking processes.Õ Ð Jennifer Cassingena Harper, Malta Council for Science and Technology This illuminating book combines theory and practice to analyse the experiences and impacts of foresight activities in various European countries. It includes case studies with a focus on different societal issues including national development, science and technology, and sustainable development. The contributors expertly describe and analyse foresight projects carried out in countries at various stages of economic development including mature market economies, transition economies and young democracies. The theoretical chapters on stakeholder participation, negotiation and dialogue, learning, and visioning are useful in the planning and analyses of foresight activities. The case study chapters explicitly demonstrate how the societal context can influence the planning and impact of foresight policy. Scholars of foresight and technology assessment will find plenty of information in this invaluable book. It will also prove essential for Masters courses on foresight or future studies, and public policy courses with a focus on future policy and planning.

Many organizations in both the private and public sector are confronted with stiff challenges as they face rapid changes in the business environment. Understanding the causes of these changes is essential if organizations are to fashion suitable management responses. In a highly competitive and globalized scenario, business creativity provides the spark that fosters the development and implementation of innovation and organizational change. Increased understanding of the concepts of business creativity and strategic innovation management provides valuable insights into how organizations can change to meet new challenges. The book aims to: explain the nature of the acceleration in discontinuous change that is affecting the Western business environment emphasise the importance of taking a strategic approach to management responses to encourage creative and innovative skills indicate how a detailed strategic plan can be developed to support organizations intent on profitable survival in the twenty-first century. This textbook will be the perfect accompaniment to postgraduate courses on innovation management and creativity management. The wide-ranging approach means that the book will also be useful supplementary reading on a range of courses from management of technology to strategic management.

This book sheds light on what has come to be known as corporate foresight and its influence on innovation management. Throughout the book, the contributors examine the practice of corporate foresight and how it may lead to the identification of opportunities for innovation. They also explore the complex processes and conditions that may enable (or impede) the potential of contemporary organizations to capture value from their corporate foresight exercises. Representing an interesting mix of competing ideas and perspectives, the book offers deep insights into the interactive effects of corporate foresight and its contribution to innovation management. This book was originally published as a special issue of Technology Analysis & Strategic Management.

​Decision-makers at all levels are being confronted with novel complexities and uncertainties and face long-term challenges which require foresight about long-term future prospects, assumptions, and strategies. This book explores how foresight studies can be systematically undertaken and used in this context. It explicates why and how methods like horizon scanning, scenario planning, and roadmapping should be applied when dealing with high levels of uncertainty. The scope of the book moves beyond “narrow” technology foresight, towards addressing systemic interrelations between social, technological, economic, environmental, and political systems. Applications of foresight tools to such fields as energy, cities, health, transportation, education, and sustainability are considered as well as enabling technologies including nano-, bio-, and information technologies and cognitive sciences. The approaches will be illustrated with specific actual cases.

This book presents a comprehensive debate and analysis of existing Territorial Impact Assessment (TIA) methodologies, designed under the auspices of the ESPON programme since the mid-2000s. This is intended to serve as a TIA handbook for the reader, to better understand the main differences, advantages and shortcomings of each presented TIA methodology. It also serves as a manual for professors and students in the field of policy evaluation, and territorial analysis, as it presents concrete examples of the implementation of each TIA methodology, their formulas and intrinsic evaluation elements. The purpose of policy evaluation methodologies is to check the main effects of private and public investments, in order to report back to policymakers and citizens on their efficiency and effectiveness. Over the past decades, both in Europe and worldwide, there has been an increasingly awareness of the need to implement/reinforce policy evaluation practices, at all territorial levels. At the same time, it has become widely accepted that many policy interventions produce impacts in more than one dimensions of territorial development. In this context, the use of a holistic and territorial approach for policy impact assessment evaluation has rapidly been adopted by the European Commission as a mainstream policy evaluation procedure.

In the Research Handbook on Program Evaluation, an impressive range of authors take stock of the history and current standing of key issues and debates in the evaluation field. Examining current literature of program evaluation, the Research Handbook assesses the field's status in a post-pandemic and social justice-oriented world, examining today’s theoretical and practical concerns and proposing how they might be resolved by future innovations. This title contains one or more Open Access chapters.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Games and Learning Alliance, GALA 2015, held in Rome, Italy, in December 2015. The 33 revised full papers and 15 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 102 submissions. The papers presented cover a variety of aspects and knowledge fields. They are grouped around the following topics: games for health, games for mobility, pervasive gaming and urban mobility.