Foreword

Complex systems and problems have become the norm rather than the exception. Governments are struggling to make sense of and respond to them, not only to prepare for crises, but also to identify future opportunities. An approach based on allocating responsibilities or risks among specific policy areas has proven inadequate for addressing the scale and interrelatedness of emerging complex challenges. Traditional approaches are especially inadequate for coping with fast-paced change, uncertainty and unpredictable events as well as the cascading consequences that come with them.

To respond to these challenges, governments need to be able to actively explore possibilities, experiment, and continuously learn as part of a broader governance system. This broad-based capacity is referred to as “anticipatory innovation governance” (AIG). The OECD has been working with the government of Finland and the European Commission to examine how the Finland’s governance processes and mechanisms need to be transformed to deal with complex and future challenges in a systemic manner. The work has created a blueprint to help governments incorporate anticipatory innovation functions within their governance system.

The report builds a new model of anticipatory innovation governance based on the work done by the Observatory of Public Sector Innovation at the OECD and the experience of Finland. This model was tested in the assessment of the anticipatory innovation system in Finland conducted in 2020-2021 and the lessons of the following pilot case studies conducted in autumn 2021 and spring 2022.

The empirical work in Finland showed what anticipatory innovation capacity in governments looks like: how it interacts with both the core steering processes of government – strategy, budgeting, regulations – and organisational and individual capacities and capabilities. The model is not designed to be an “extra layer” of government structure, but rather to be integrated with the everyday functions of governance and make them more proactive in addressing future risks, opportunities and uncertainties.

Finland is in a privileged position to carry out this work: the country has been systematically developing its public governance system over the last decade by building up its strategic foresight system and experimentation functions and developing co-ordination mechanisms that support the uptake of complex challenges. While Finnish society and public sector are leaders in numerous international comparisons, the Finnish government has identified a need to further improve in the way it systematically addresses future issues through foresight and innovation.