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Created by the Public Governance Directorate

This website was created by the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OPSI), part of the OECD Public Governance Directorate (GOV).

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Anticipatory Innovation

Exploring the future and taking action today

anticipatory innovation governance

About Anticipatory Innovation

Anticipatory Innovation is the ability of organisations to consistently perceive, understand and act on the future as it emerges in the present.

Anticipatory Innovation Governance

The nature of the issues that governments are confronted with today is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. Governments need to consider variety of scenarios and act upon them in real time. Public sector needs to prepare for what is coming next, continuously identify, test and implement innovative solutions to benefit from future opportunities while reducing the risks through increased resilience of their public systems. 

To facilitate that OPSI has developed an Anticipatory Innovation Governance (AIG) model.

Building out the governance model

The Anticipatory Innovation team at OPSI is current building out the anticipatory innovation governance model. This includes the following work:

  • In Finland, OPSI together with the European Commission is testing the whole AIG model and currently running 4 pilots in continuous learning, carbon neutrality and budgeting, future-oriented child strategy and roles of senior decision makers in government. Take a look at the preceding assessment report here.
  • In Ireland, OPSI is building a curricula for anticipatory innovation across three different target groups: senior leaders, policymakers and strategic foresight experts. OPSI will carry out capacity building workshops in autumn 2022 and spring 2023.
  • In Latvia, OPSI is developing a model and a toolkit to orchestrate anticipatory innovation ecosystems in partnership with the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia.

In the upcoming months OPSI will launch AIG work in Lithuania, Malta, Italy, and Sweden to integrate strategic foresight better with policy planning systems and risk assessment.

Available tools, methods and resources

  • The anticipatory prototyping methods developed in the context of Slovenia public sector talent planning will help you connect scenario planning to innovation prototyping in a collaborative way.
  • Read about the different models to link strategic foresight to policy planning in the example of Ireland here.

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