Global: Anticipatory Innovation & Foresight

We are on the lookout for game-changing, freely available toolkits that can ignite innovative thinking and drive progress in governments worldwide. As the hosts of OECD Toolkit Navigator, one of the world’s largest compendia of public sector innovation toolkits, we’re excited to collaborate with you to identify fresh, forward-thinking resources to support governments and public servants in the design and delivery of better policies and services.   Five minutes – that’s all it…

In a world where change is the only constant, the ability to anticipate and adapt to the future has become a vital survival skill for governments and public sector organisations. A reactive approach to policymaking is no longer enough. It is increasingly important to anticipate policy challenges and take action to proactively steer towards preferred futures. We are seeking peers and experts to join us on this ambitious journey.   Building on experiences strengthening anticipatory…

Finland conducted its first public sector innovation barometer in the Central Government. The results are in and once again reaffirm that Finland gets many things right. 93% of organisations innovated during 2020-21. Innovation activities are motivated in particular by the needs of citizens and clients, productivity and new technologies. Drivers of innovation activities are also reflected in individual innovations and their effects. Innovation Barometer: what and why? The Innovation Barometer is…

Joshua Polchar, Strategic Foresight Lead at the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation, reflects on the panel on which he spoke at European Forum Alpbach 2022, and offers perspectives on how governments can deal with the crises they’re facing without inadvertently missing the warning signs of new ones.  Looking at current events, it feels like governments are in constant firefighting mode. How can we make sense of what’s going on without losing perspective of the...

Decision-makers and experts frequently express an unmet need for resources to help them better perceive, make sense of, and act upon future changes as they are emerging in the present. But, how do we get started with creating something new that responds to the future as it’s shaping up around us? That process of generating novel initiatives that take the future into account is what we mean by “anticipatory innovation”. To make the journey easier,...

The OECD Directorate for Public Governance (GOV) is working closely with the Portuguese Centro de Competências de Planeamento, de Políticas e de Prospetiva (PlanAPP) on Strengthening Decision Making and Policy Development in Portugal. The project, which covers four specific modules, supports PlanAPP in becoming a core competency centre in the Portuguese public administration by enhancing its institutional and administrative capacities. PlanAPP, a new unit positioned within the Presidency of…

We are expanding our team and looking for experienced career specialists with strong competencies in foresight and anticipation as well as assessing, strengthening, and measuring the innovative capacity of the public sector. At OPSI, we help the public sector be more proactive and intentional in using innovation to achieve outcomes. Together with countries around the world, we strive to make governments work better and achieve public…

Back when I was an exchange student in France, I lived in an apartment shared by nine people, all from different countries and cultures. We had a large kitchen and lived on the city’s main square, so it was a prime location to host some of the best house parties. Imagine: nine people each bring a dozen friends and you’ve easily got over a hundred people in your home! One of the things that most...

The Anticipatory Innovation Starter Kit (AISK) offers a step-by-step approach to access a set of methodologies and tools to solve organisational challenges in the area of anticipatory innovation governance. Developed by the Experimentation Lab for Public Administration (LabX), part of the Administrative Modernisation Agency (AMA) in Portugal, the starter kit intends to be an actionable tool to envisage and anticipate changes in public sector organisations. Users start in a "Pool of Problems"…

Features: Facilitators guide, Glossary

If your organisation had a crystal ball, what questions would you ask about the future? What would you do with the answers it received? In this post, we consider the ways in which innovation agencies – government-funded or managed institutions that provide financial and other support to catalyse private sector innovation – can use imagined visions of the future to shape present decisions. Today’s innovation agencies take on a wide range of tasks and duties,...