Project

Strategic Foresight supports innovation and economic actors in identifying both possible negative developments and new opportunities for Baden-Württemberg at an early stage by highlighting possible future developments, taking into account the global and regional perspective. 

On behalf of the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Economic Affairs, Labour and Tourism, the Competence Center Foresight of Fraunhofer ISI, together with Fraunhofer IAO, is developing a future scanner for innovation and economic actors in Baden-Württemberg. Elements of the monitoring of signals and the evaluation of weak signals are methodically linked and the results are processed in a newly developed digital platform, the future scanner. 

The digital platform is based on the semi-automated evaluation of relatively different news sites from all over the world. Using the BERTopic algorithm, so-called topics were generated. These visualise topics that occur in the entirety of the articles. The automatically generated topics were then qualitatively evaluated, selected and interpreted by the Foresight Team and are now being reflected on with stakeholders from Baden-Württemberg. 

The platform combines the scientifically sound and methodically advanced search for early signals of technological and social change. It provides both editorially prepared information on possible future trends and extensive links to information sources.

The Future Scanner serves as orientation and inspiration guide by showing potential economic and technology trends for the various sectors and regions of Baden-Württemberg. Five so-called future economic worlds are differentiated, plus the two cross-cutting themes of energy and AI:

- Redesigned Mobility & Logistics World

- Tailored Health & Nutrition World

- Looped Material & Resource World

- Responsive Tool & Robotics World

Meshed Cyber & Service World

As part of the project, region-based future dialogues will take place in autumn 2022 at various locations in Baden-Württemberg, to support a future-oriented exchange between the stakeholders. In this way, each region with local innovation actors can identify opportunities and also transformation needs from the specifically extracted topics, network and, if necessary, position themselves in terms of regional policy.