MLW:Vision Building

Vision Building is a workshop organized in Bucharest on the 3rd and 4th of May, 2011, and to be coordinated by Dr. Philine Warnke, Dr. Elna Schirrmeister, and Prof. Francois Jégou.

Background
A vision describes an idealised desirable future of a specific system that is substantially different from the status quo. A vision is relevant to the actors concerned and thereby motivates, inspires and directs action towards the vision. In contrast, scenarios describe different plausible futures that usually contain desirable and non-desirable elements.

In business, policy circles and civil society communities, shared visions are increasingly recognised as highly relevant for initiating transition processes and achieving goals.

Powerful, inspiring visions cannot be generated in a top-down manner. They need to be co-created in a participatory process. Accordingly, interactive visioning processes are an important element in the Foresight toolbox. However, in comparison to other approaches such as scenario building, Delphi surveys and roadmapping there is only little theoretical work on visioning.

While in principle visions can be “tacit”, Foresight aims at expressing visions in an ex-plicit manner through images, metaphors and texts to communicate and share the “idealised” future. Even though different practitioners use different visioning approaches they share certain elements such as exploration of individual and personal visions, investigation of shared values, assessing the legacy of the past and exploring dreams for the future. Very often visioning involves visual and other creative elements as a catalyst of expressing wishes and values. Scenario analysis can be used as a first step in visioning process in particular to deal with the external environment of the area that is tackled.

Workshop Concept
In the Bucharest Mutual Learning Workshop we would like to share with participants, expectations and experiences on visioning processes, jointly engage in a small visioning exercise for a topic of interest to the participants and jointly generate a set of best practice lessons for the design and implementation of visioning processes.

Participants
Facilitators:
 * Francois Jegou, Strategic Design Scenarios, Belgium
 * Elna Schirrmeister, Fraunhofer ISI, Germany
 * Philine Warnke, Fraunhofer ISI, Germany

Participants:
 * Radu Albulescu, National Institute for Chemical - Pharmaceutical Research and Development
 * Ionel Andrei, National Authority for Scientific Research
 * Ghenadie Cernei, Agency for Innovation and Technology Transfer, Republic of Moldova
 * Denisa Duta, National Institute of Research and Development for Food
 * Bogdan Dragancea, National Institute of Research and Development for Food
 * Radu Gheorghiu, Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding
 * Dan Grosu, Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding
 * Maria Ichim, Institute for Bioengineering, Biotechnology and Environmental Protection
 * Gheorghe Marmureanu, National Institute for Earth Psysics
 * Cristian Moisoiu, Institute of World Economy
 * Sergiu Porcescu, Academy of Science of Moldova, Republic of Moldova
 * Ingo Rollwagen, Deutsche Bank Research, Germany
 * Ioan Stefanescu, National Institute of Research and Development for Cryogenics and Isotopic Technologies
 * Elena Toma, National Authority for Scientific Research
 * Nicolae Vasile, Research Institute for Electrical Machines
 * Marian Zulean, Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding

Day 1, Tuesday 3.5.2011
Introductory Session 1h


 * Welcome, Purpose of the workshop, Outline of the day
 * Introduction of UEFISCDI, QLHE, expert team
 * Introductory round and collection of expectations to be recorded on flipchart
 * Establishment of Ground Rules

Session 1: Building Common Understanding 2h

The scope of this session is to collectively explore the topic of "Future public R&D in Romania" building a series of shared maps on the main topics, key stakeholders, past issues, drivers of change and reach a common understanding across the participants.

Format: Plenary work on icon maps Presentation on drivers of change in public R&D by Elna Schirrmeister and Philine Warnke

Lunch

Session 2: Visioning 4,5 h

(Re) Warm-Up The aim of this exercise is to further open up the and remove constraints to visionary thinking. Format: open roundtable on possible discontinuities (plenary)

Generating the Vision Work on question icons to characterise the vision Production of 3min video snapshots Format: Work in pairs on icon maps, visualisation through internet search

Coffee-in between

Sharing the Vision Jointly collecting shared elements noting down disagreements Format: Plenary

Feeding the shared vision Working on the implications of the shared vision for the key stakeholders Format: Work in pairs (different from before)

Coffee in-between

Sharing the stakeholders views Format: plenary, open presentations of the pairs’ findings

Review of Day 0.5h Roundtable, reflections on the day

Day 2, Friday 4.5.2011
FORwiki Presentation 30min

Visioning Theory 2h (Facilitated by Philine Warnke) Visioning Tools and Practices, Discussion 40min Role of Visioning in Foresight, Discussion 30min Visioning Experience from Deutsche Bank Research, Discussion 30min Visioning Example, Discussion 20min
 * Francois Jegou, Strategic Design Scenarios, Belgium
 * Philine Warnke, Elna Schirrmeister, Fraunhofer ISI, Germany
 * Ingo Rollwagen, Deutsche Bank Research, Germany
 * Francois Jegou, Strategic Design Scenarios, Belgium

Coffee in-between

Review of Lessons Learned Open Discussion 1.30h (Facilitated by Elna Schirrmeister)
 * What have we learned from theory and practice?
 * What are the key aspects of Visioning?
 * What should be taken into account for further envisioning public R&D in Romania?
 * What should be captured in ForWiki?

Lunch and Conclusion of the Event