The Futures ProjectOverview by the Director of the IPTSThe next ten years may well turn out to be the fastest changing years for Europe in its history during peace time. Information and communication technologies are developing at a ferocious pace. Together with breakthroughs in life sciences, these technologies are transforming the way we live and the way we work, while the single currency, the enlargement of the EU, demographic changes, sustainability concerns and the wider context of globalisation are transforming our economy. Each of these “trend breaks” is in itself a challenge. The fact that they will occur simultaneously over the next ten years, and strongly interact with each other, is even more challenging for most policy areas and in particular policies relating to technology, competitiveness and employment. Many new opportunities for growth and for satisfying human needs will derive from the breakthroughs that will transform the technological frontier, especially in the areas of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and biotechnologies. But the key technological drivers also bring challenges. First, these technologies are carriers of globalisation. They raise global governance issues (for example over privacy and security in e-commerce and on food policy regarding genetically modified organisms). Second, the lead companies are multinationals. Their technologies and the global orientation of their actions are transforming the rules of the game on competitiveness: new markets are opening up, strategic acquisitions are being made and alliances formed. The pace of change brings increasing uncertainty. Third, people and firms will need new skills and competencies to use and work with these new technologies effectively. Europe though is not just a passive rider on a wave of new technologies and globalisation. Some of the most dramatic changes that are on the agenda for the next ten years have been put there by European decisions. The single market will be fully functional – forming the largest block of consumer demand in the World. The Euro will be in circulation – helping to consolidate the reality of the single economic space of Europe. Enlargement will be underway, extending the scale of the European Union and strengthening its economic and social ties with the surrounding countries, to form the key economic pole of the world economy. Europe clearly has the potential to become the lead actor on the global stage. Meanwhile, the evolution of European Society itself will be far from slow. Perhaps the key underlying societal trend is the ageing of the European population. This is especially significant at a time of almost permanent technological and industrial revolution that is tending to undermine the relevance of existing skills and occupational structures. Renewing skills rather than replacing the workers will call for responses from all sides: individuals, employers as well as the state. Also, over the long term there have been steady changes in lifestyles and family structures such as increasing numbers of working women, rising educational levels, increasing single person or single parent families and rising divorce rates. This changing social scene interacts with shifts in the structures of employment (increased part-time work, the demise of the “job for life”, shortening skill cycles, the blurring of home-work boundaries, growing telework and freelancing). The result is a “Mosaic Society” in which the well-defined categories that the post-war institutions and social mechanisms were designed to support no longer fit people and their aspirations and needs. Here too there will be need for changes in social systems. The changes required, however, will vary according to existing national structures because Europe is very different from place to place, with different problems and ways forward. The IPTS “Futures” Project was launched in mid-1998 precisely to examine the individual and combined effects of these technological, economic, political and social drivers. Especially, “Futures” set out to find out what they mean for technology, competitiveness and employment. Over the past 18 months, “Futures” has been the major horizontal activity of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (one of the eight institutes of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre). In the process IPTS brought together more than 150 experts and policy-makers, drawn from industry, academia and government to take part in a series of brainstorming sessions, seminars and workshops. A series of 17 reports have so far been published. The result is a major benchmarking and prospective analysis carried out at full European scale. The first of the key messages to emerge from the Futures Project was the way in which the technological dynamo is today driving forward innovation and change with an unprecedented momentum. Clearly, Europe has to maintain its position in the technological vanguard. But can it? It has many areas of strength, but also weaknesses and worrying gaps in its technological capabilities. Particularly, there are gaps in some of the underlying enabling technologies that will underpin the high-technology industries of the future. Europe has many options, but must also work towards a world class system of incentives, infrastructures and investments for research and development. And above all, it must take advantage of the European dimension, and fully realise the potential of its natural “European Research Area”. Also, if the innovation system operates too slowly, lacks sufficient scale and integration or, perhaps worst of all, focuses on the wrong targets, Europe will not punch its weight in the 21st century. The second main theme of the report to emerge was the position of Europe in the Global Knowledge Society, in particular in relation to globalisation, competitiveness and know-how. The technological changes described above operate to drive and to carry forward globalisation, and this has direct impacts on competitiveness. Perhaps the clearest manifestations of globalisation are the worldwide alliances between large multinationals and increasing pressures for systems of governance to make sure that these overarching economic forces operate for the benefit of the many rather than the few. Many voices, however, express strongly different views and it is hard to reconcile these interests in complex areas such as carbon-dioxide abatement, privacy and security on the internet and control of GMOs. Economic globalisation, in fact, very firmly puts global governance on the agenda for the coming years, not just for the encouragement of economic interests and growth but for the protection of people and their interests. Europeís growing size and wealth give it a legitimate claim in the global arena, to promote its economic interests and those of its people. However, recent experiences with international co-ordination authorities underline that the search for workable formulas that transcend vested local or national interests will constitute a particularly difficult challenge for policy in the coming years. At firm level, globalisation involves juggling with, and restructuring, economic assets from place to place, with capital investments becoming increasingly footloose. Such global changes often have rapid and dramatic consequences at local level, in terms of both inward investment and divestment. Meanwhile, the governance institutions of the world economy are still largely organised at national level while markets are largely regional. This mismatch of scales between drivers and responses is being tackled at the European level by the implementation of the single market and monetary union. Europe can already claim to be the largest consumer market in the world, which is certainly a key factor in attracting investment and jobs. So far the full benefits in terms of greater economies of scale have not been fully realised, but when they do they should have considerable implications for Europeís global competitiveness, particularly if the extra scale effects of enlargement can be mobilised. One key message that has emerged is that the competitiveness of regions rests crucially on whether they are attractive places to invest, to do business and to live and work. In the global economy more and more of the attractiveness of a region lies in the knowledge assets it can mobilise. Such knowledge is often embedded in very tangible things like hardware, technologies and equipment. Knowledge exists in fixed intangibles such as patents, software and copyrights. Knowledge lies also in human systems such as university departments, research laboratories and high performance organisations. Unlocking this knowledge, however, requires a further form of knowledge: know-how – i.e. the right people with the right skills and attitudes. This could be a European strength in the global economy, because Europe has good basic innovation systems and well-educated people. But are Europeans educated in the right skills? Are Europeans innovative enough to respond to the challenges that have been outlined above? Indeed, are European institutions well suited to this age of innovation? Many times during the Futures Project we encountered a concern that European Society is not yet well equipped for the challenges of technology and the global society. The final main theme to emerge was the way that European Society is driving change. Here we saw the challenges of the simultaneous ageing of society and the emergence of “Mosaic Living”. In particular, we looked at the major challenges that Europe will have to confront in adapting its social systems to the “shock of the new” as well as to the long-term trends towards ageing. In particular, the difficulty of renewing skills points towards the likelihood of a serious mismatch between what is technologically possible and what is socially accepted. This issue also raises the spectre of a multipolarised society in Europe, with the traditional divisions between rich and poor, and core and periphery being supplemented by new axes of social separation such as “information haves” and “have nots”, work rich and work poor, or well-off elderly retired versus those that are on basic incomes. These strains and divisions will be particularly acute in the case of the pre-accession countries, which will have to make up for a legacy of under-investment in infrastructures and institutions. Somehow, the new partners of the EU will have to make fast economic gains without abandoning social cohesion. And the many European Societies that will make up the new Union will have to meld into a society that has sufficient legitimacy amongst its people to carry the European vision forward through current and further phases of enlargement. While not aiming to address the full spectrum of social and economic issues, the Futures Project has identified some of the main changes confronting Europe in the coming decade. Unique opportunities are opening up for Europe, but it also faces challenges of historic size and significance: to harness the technological dynamo; to take a lead in the global knowledge society; to build a sustainable and inclusive Enlarged Europe for the 21st Century. This will call for timely and well designed incentives to invest in infrastructures and innovation. Especially important will be investments that actively engage more Europeans, of all ages, than we do today. More than ever, people will be the key to unlock the way to Europe as a knowledgeable society as it moves along the road to 2010. Contact J.-M. Cadiou IPTS Director html To access the Futures project: http://futures.jrc.es/menupage-b.htm
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