TAMING THE WILD & LISTENING TO THE WEAK: iKnow Conference

Taming the Wild & Listening to the Weak: Towards a Strategic Issue Management System for Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) Conference will be held on 27th and 28th October 2011 in Brussels, Belgium. It is a final conference of the iKnow project.

The iKnow project is one of six Blue Sky foresight research projects funded by the European Commission FP7 under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities theme. The project is aimed at interconnecting Knowledge on issues and developments potentially shaking or shaping the future of science, technology and innovation (STI) in Europe and the world. In so doing, iKnow focuses on ‘Wild Cards’, and the ‘Weak Signals’ which help to track them. Wild Cards are high impact and low perceived probability events (e.g. systems failures or sudden transformations). Weak Signals are ambiguous events providing advance intelligence on potential wild cards, challenges and opportunities.

The project developed and piloted conceptual and methodological frameworks to identify and analyse Wild Cards and Weak Signals (WI-WE); and a pioneering platform to interconnect and assess selected WIWE implications for, and expected impact on, science, technology and innovation (STI) and key dimensions of the European Research Area (ERA).

iKnow was launched in November 2008 and will officially close in October 2011. The iKnow Consortium included partners from UK, Finland, Czech Republic, Germany and Israel. During the life of the project over 1,200 members registered to the iKnow Community. As a result, we have launched nodes in Brazil, Colombia, Canada, France, Malaysia, Spain and Venezuela.

For more information about the conference please see the attached brochure.