Nordic ICT Foresight: Futures of the ICT environment and applications on the Nordic level

The Nordic ICT Foresight project was launched in May 2005 with research partners VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, FOI (Sweden), SINTEF (Norway) and DTI (Denmark). The aim of the project was to contribute to the strategic intelligence of the Nordic knowledge region so that the full potential of information and communication technology can be exploited to increase the welfare in the Nordic countries. The focal areas of the ICT applications in this study were experience economy, health, production economy and security. In the research process there were five research phases: 1) desktop survey, 2) SWOT analysis, 3) scenario and vision workshop, 4) roadmapping workshop and 5) action workshop. The research phases (3, 4 and 5) were carried out as focused workshops that applied different methods. Publication presents scenarios, roadmaps and action path analyses of the potential developments of ICTs on the Nordic level. Policy recommendations were formulated on the basis of the research process. Policy recommendations were divided into implementation strategies, i.e. actions that should be proactively pushed through on the Nordic level, and adaptive strategies, i.e. actions that are more reactive in the face of global developments.