The aim of our paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis of current foresight practices and their impact on organizational learning, highlighting recent developments. The analysis is based on around forty foresight projects conducted by the CNAM community of practice in the last ten years or so, based on the typology proposed by Bootz (2003) and Bootz and Monti (2008). The aim is twofold: first, we test the robustness of the initial typology and, second, we examine global developments in foresight practices through an analysis of their cognitive aspects. The examination of present practice led to the typology being refined, and demonstrates how its impact on organizational learning has been extended. It also shows how discussion has evolved through networks that are more open to the outside world and closer to action, with measures and tools adopted to promote greater flexibility. These changes may be partially explained by the emergence of the knowledge economy.

Introduction

The link between foresight and learning was initially a concern that naturally emerged within the French school due to its specificities. Since the seminal work by Gaston Berger (Durance, 2010), foresight studies have indeed held a unique and specific position within the context of futures research: “It is an authentic concept of its own, rooted in the French worldview” (Valaskakis, 2010, 1464). Well removed from the normative and determinist approaches of forecasting, it is closely linked to strategic foresight (Godet, 2010) or corporate foresight (Rohrbeck et al., 2015) which considers that there is not just one but several potential futures on which it is possible to act through present actions (Ben Martin, 2010). Debates between the ‘French style’ and the ‘American style’ (Coates, 2010) suggest that there are some differences between “la prospective” and strategic foresight however. The first one views scenarios more as a structuring tool for collective debate (Bootz, 2005; Ringland, 2010) than as a presentation tool (Coates, 2010). It also aimed for a more proactive approach by mobilizing a wide reflection (Godet, 2010), whilst strategic foresight approaches frequently have a more confidential dimension (Vishnevskiy et al., 2015) or are limited to the main stakeholders (Dufva and Ahlqvist, 2015; Cagnin and Keenan, 2008; Miles et al., 2008). This way of integrating collective reflection and action which characterizes the “French touch” (Godet, 2007) is the initial step towards taking into account the importance of organizational learning processes in the foresight approach. From its very first formulation, the foresight attitude reflected the cognitive dimensions of anticipation, in other words, “see far, see wide, analyze in depth” (Berger, 1959, p.218). In terms of foresight activity (Bootz, 2010), we historically find, on the one hand, approaches that focus on strategic planning practices which essentially consider learning as an education process designed for decision-makers (De Geus, 1988; Schwartz, 1991), and on the other hand, approaches that adopt more participative approaches, largely used as tools for collective mobilization (Godet, 2010). In these original works mainly stemming from the French school, learning phenomena are taken into account, but the real nature of the link between foresight and organizational learning remains vague. These works, dating more than 20 years back, were mostly drawn from foresight practitioners and thus suffered from a lack of understanding of the organizational learning processes that were considered at that time as still marginal and complex (Dogson, 1993). However, in the last 10 years or so, the context has changed.