About Foresight Centre

Established in 2006.

Director: Alexander Sokolov, Tenured Professor at HSE, Deputy Director of ISSEK.

The Centre is a strategic partner of international organisations, research centres and universities for performing large-scale Foresight studies. It has a status of Regional UNIDO Centre on Technology Foresight for Russia and CIS. It is a member of International Foresight Academy. The Centre’s experts are members of working groups at OECD, UNIDO, European Commission, World Bank and other international organisations.

The International Advisory Board of the Foresight Centre is chaired by Professor Luke Georghiou, Vice President for research and innovation at the University of Manchester, UK.

Directions of activities:

• Performing long-term futures studies
• Developing and promoting the Foresight methodology
• Consulting and education

Projects. Under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, the Centre carries out long-term S&T Foresight studies, organises work on setting national S&T priority areas  and critical technologies. It builds up complex roadmaps of innovative development for a range of sectors (ICT, nanotechnology, power engineering, aviation, shipbuilding, space navigation, etc.), for large companies (Gazprom, Rosneft, Aeroflot, Nissan et al) and for regions (city of Moscow, Tula and Samara regions et al).

Resources. These include databases of statistical, bibliometric, patent information and global technology trends; a knowledge base on Russian and international Foresight projects; software for interaction with expert’s network and roadmapping. The Centre’s experts database includes information on over ten thousand leading Russian and international researchers and specialists.

Networks. The Centre coordinates the activities of sectoral Foresight centres and of the national system for technology Foresight established according to the Decree of the President of Russia of May 7, 2013 “On long-term state economic policy”, and provides methodological base for the system.

Consulting. The Centre provides expert support and consulting services for Russian government agencies, large and medium companies, business associations, universities, clusters, technology platforms, etc.

Education and training. The Centre provides master-classes for companies, universities and research organisations on Foresight, strategic management and shaping STI policy. The Centre’s experts teach graduate and post-graduate students, e.g. within the English language elective course “Analysis, strategies and policy for STI”, and from 2014 — within the Master’s programme “Governance of Science, Technology and Innovation”.

Foresight and STI Governance academic journal has been quarterly published by HSE in Russian since 2007. In 2013 it was included in Scopus. It is also indexed in international databases SSRN, RePEc, EBSCO. According to the Russian Science Citation Index two-year impact factor it takes the 1st position in categories “S&T Studies” and “Organisation and Management” and is 4th in “Economics”. It is widely circulated in Russia and internationally.