Visions that work: Driving innovation with visions of the future

Ms Kaiser, as Head of the Centre for Responsible Research and Innovation at the Fraunhofer IAO, you deal intensively with social trends and the expectations of new technologies. Why is it important to respond to society's wishes in innovation and transformation processes?

Simone Kaiser: In order to drive change forward, we need to spread it across many shoulders. Ideally, this means that people embrace and support it. They have individual perspectives and needs that are important for implementing change in practice. Especially when we talk about transformation processes at a societal level, we shouldn't leave anyone behind.

In your opinion, which social trend is underestimated by many companies - and could prove to be a real game changer in the innovation process?

I believe that the circular economy is still underestimated by many companies. It is often seen primarily as a sustainability issue - but it harbours enormous potential for innovation. If products are developed from the outset in such a way that materials remain in the cycle, completely new business models, partnerships and production processes are created. This not only changes individual companies, but entire industries. And for it to work, it also needs society - customers who are willing to return, share or reuse products. This interaction can be a real game changer.

Can companies also significantly influence social trends - and thus get the ball rolling themselves, so to speak?

The research is very clear: both are possible. Some trends emerge bottom-up - in other words, a social innovation is at the beginning. One example is car sharing, which had its early beginnings in the environmental movement of the 1980s. When smartphones were then used across the board, it developed from a niche phenomenon into a broad, new business model. For other innovations, the impetus comes from technological development - as is currently the case with generative AI, which will change our society far beyond a trend. Technological innovations are never independent of the social changes that precede them, accompany them or make them possible in the first place. Companies can utilise this mechanism.

You develop new processes and methods for stakeholders from business, research and politics in order to shape innovations responsibly. Can you give an example of how such a process works in practice?

A good example is our "City, Country, Opportunities" project. Together with an interdisciplinary group of scientists, we have created images of the future that show how living and working in urban and rural areas could change. We then discussed these images with citizens in an innovative online format. Almost 9,000 people took part, contributing their concerns and opportunities and thus providing important impetus to the debate. For me, such processes are a central part of responsible innovation design: they bring social perspectives on board at an early stage and thus create the basis for acceptance and support, especially when technological innovations change our everyday lives.

Can you explain this in more detail? What is a vision of the future?

A future image is a depiction of a possible future. It can be an illustration, a film, a graphic, a textual narrative, a dystopia or a utopia - abstract or concrete. But it helps to form a shared idea of the possible future and then to agree on it.

How can companies develop their own vision of the future and use it to drive innovation?

To develop our own vision of the future, we start with a well-founded trend analysis - this makes it clear which changes, opportunities and risks are really relevant. By linking these trends together, various scenarios emerge: from the probable to the less probable to desirable futures. And it is precisely these desirable images that are worth their weight in gold in the innovation process: they provide orientation, create identity and unleash creativity. On this basis, it is then possible to determine which steps are necessary today to make this future a reality.

We at the Hub also work with the foresight method. What advantages can creative expertise bring to the innovation process?

Creatives play a central role in innovation processes because they are particularly good at two things: Firstly, they open up discourse. Firstly, they open up discourse. Their professional creativity brings in new perspectives and thus creates space for ideas. Secondly, they translate technical language into a generally understandable, comprehensible and concrete form - whether in images, stories or prototypes. Both are crucial for winning people over to transformation processes and getting them on board.

How do companies take the first step towards transformation? Do you have a specific measure?

It starts with a well-founded analysis: where do we stand and what developments, opportunities or risks are relevant? This is followed by scenarios and images of the future that combine vision and strategy. Finally, it is about taking the first steps in an agile, learning structure - with pilot projects, visible activities and the establishment of strong internal and external networks in order to anchor responsibility on a broad basis. This creates a momentum for transformation from the outset that is sustainable in the long term.