Discovery at Nesta: Experiments in strategic foresight
Welcome to the Medium blog for the Discovery Hub at Nesta.
The Discovery Hub scans the horizon for emerging trends, technologies and innovations. Our work is interdisciplinary (bringing together futures methods with data science and qualitative research) and social impact-led (with a focus on innovations and technologies that have real potential to generate public benefit).
We will be using this space to test our latest thinking and to share emerging findings from our more experimental projects.
A snapshot of our work
We recently teamed up with Prospect magazine to launch Minister for the Future, a thought experiment intended to inject more long-term thinking into a public sphere dominated by chronic short-termism. There are eight critical issues at the top of our Minister’s inbox — areas of policy where we anticipate a collision of trends will set off tectonic movements in the UK’s society and economy. Under each theme we invite academics, activists, business leaders and scientists to pitch ambitious proposals for action to the Minister. We’re planning a series of events to further explore some of the ideas raised in this special feature. If you’re interested in joining us then please sign-up here.
Discovery’s experimental Innovation Sweet Spots is an experimental approach to mapping trends in innovation systems using a combination of cutting-edge data science combined with foresight methods. You can explore our first edition on green technologies and we will soon publish a new report on innovation trends in food.
We also run a recurring series called Tech in the Dock, which offers up a playful framework for weighing the social benefits of an emerging technology against the potential risks. For example, we investigated whether AI chatbots should be used to address the UK’s loneliness problem.
Every year we curate a set of Future Signals, which picks out the early stage trends, technologies and ideas set to shape the year to come. Discovery is also home to Nesta’s employee-led innovation activity — which includes a new residency scheme (designed for a social impact context), a sabbatical scheme and a programme of learning events with pioneering thinkers and doers.
We’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to comment on our articles or drop us a line at discoveryhub@nesta.org.uk.
