Future developments tend to provoke ambivalent feelings: fascination, on the one hand, and fear, on the other, both closely linked to the uncertainty that future developments often entail. Innovation represents the successful implementation of ideas with a degree of newness for the application area and thereby has to continuously deal with future developments. The aim of foresight is to reduce the level of uncertainty by analyzing developments and trends in a methodological manner. With the continuous improvement of the methodological toolbox in innovation management throughout the last decades, analytical and data-based methods are on the rise. In addition to the associated opportunity for efficiency and effectiveness in the innovation process, there is the danger of losing imagination and creative power. Unexpected options often find no place in established structures, evaluation patterns, and development paths. Science fiction as a fictional art form with scientific elements offers the possibility to look beyond the known into an unexpected future. In the planning, development, and implementation of innovations, science fiction enables imagination by integrating unexpected, desirable, or dystopian aspects of the future. In this chapter, a summary of science fiction-related methodologies is presented, including an allocation to the innovation process.

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Foresight, Innovation, and Science Fiction: Expecting the Unexpected

  • Sven Schimpf,
  • Michael Lauster

摘要

Future developments tend to provoke ambivalent feelings: fascination, on the one hand, and fear, on the other, both closely linked to the uncertainty that future developments often entail. Innovation represents the successful implementation of ideas with a degree of newness for the application area and thereby has to continuously deal with future developments. The aim of foresight is to reduce the level of uncertainty by analyzing developments and trends in a methodological manner. With the continuous improvement of the methodological toolbox in innovation management throughout the last decades, analytical and data-based methods are on the rise. In addition to the associated opportunity for efficiency and effectiveness in the innovation process, there is the danger of losing imagination and creative power. Unexpected options often find no place in established structures, evaluation patterns, and development paths. Science fiction as a fictional art form with scientific elements offers the possibility to look beyond the known into an unexpected future. In the planning, development, and implementation of innovations, science fiction enables imagination by integrating unexpected, desirable, or dystopian aspects of the future. In this chapter, a summary of science fiction-related methodologies is presented, including an allocation to the innovation process.