Dr. Nadezhda Gaponenko, Millennium Project Russian Node chair, Russian Institute of Economics, Policy and Law, (RIEPL), Ministry of Industry, Science and Technology. Corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, prented the Node's report at the Millennium Project Planning Committee meeting in Louvain-la-Neuve, Wallonia, Belgium, April, 15-16, 2005.

Dr. Gaponenko underlined that it is more and more difficult to have responses to the Millennium Project questionnaires and work without a budget. She made some concrete recommandations for fundraising and also recommended improvements to the Millennium Project website. Than she focused on special issues concerning futures studies.

BURDEN OF FUTURE STUDIES’ EXPERIENCE

• Fundamental Challenges
  • Growing Complexity
  • Accelerating rhythm of evolution
  • Growing uncertainties
  • New role of different stakeholders
• Scientific Foundation
  • Chaos and Complexity
  • Evolutionary Theory
  • Cycles theory
• Experience: S&T Foresight (1980s)
  • 20- years horizon
  • Linkages between Economic, social, environmental and S&T frontiers
  • 2500 research organizations
  • 56 volumes
  • Human capacity building
  • Legislative framework (Responsibility of governmental and scientific structures; Information flows)
  • Organizational framework (Scientific Council- a place for the dialogue between policy- makers and scientists; Departments in the Ministries; Research capacities)
  • The stages of Foresight program development (1st year: methodological; 2nd year: analytical; 3rd year: 20- years horizon; 4th year: 10- years horizon; 5th year: short- term plans)
  • Incorporation into decision making process
  • From long- term perspective to the actions to shape the future
  • Common team (GEO UNEP)
• Challenges to the Experience (Agent- multy- agent models; Chaos & Complexity and Evolutionary Theories; Threes- Morphological Analyses; Analogies)
• Experience (Scenarios; Wild cards; for identified problems: TRIZ, Road mapping, Patent information)
• GUIDANCE: Chaos and Complexity; Evolutionary Theory; Cycles

The PDF version of the power-point presentation given by Dr. Gaponenko is available at: http://millennium-project.org/millennium/mppc-0405/Moscow-0405.pdf