Foresight Planning – How to Avoid Another 2020
Falling Walls Circle Tables are lending the spotlight to world-leading scientists, science strategists and policy-makers from academia, business and politics discuss how we can apply science, research and innovation to get the world moving again.
COVID shocked the world, but was it really unexpected? In this Falling Walls Circle Table, the panel investigates how well we were prepared for the pandemic, and how we can better ready ourselves with foresight planning for the changes and crises of the future.
Researchers had long predicted the threat of a global pandemic, but it’s clear that this knowledge wasn’t sufficiently translated into action. Indeed, 2020 demonstrated that warnings fail to prepare us for the threats that don’t pose an immediate and present danger. And while COVID has shaken the world, other long term dangers are on the horizon, ranging from climate change to shifts in global power structures.
Avoiding a repeat of 2020, requires us to integrate foresight planning into public and private sector processes. This means better communication with those in power. But those in power also need to learn to listen and act across partisan divides.