A newly formed Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Expert Group on Strategic Foresight brings together 10 renowned foresight experts from around the world, and includes our own Wendy McGuinness.
A vital international collaboration
Foresight practitioners look for ways to reduce uncertainty and provide more clarity over what the future may hold. Foresight is a richly collaborative field – most effective when different people, groups and countries explore alternative futures together. The Institute’s Foresight Tools page states that: Just like a gold digger who continues to try to find a vein of gold, practitioners continue to work away at a problem or issue, using a wide range of mechanisms to seek out data, information or knowledge or to make sense of any obvious nuances and interconnections.
Looking at the events of the past year, there has never been a more important time to focus – and internationally collaborate – on strategic foresight.
So, we are delighted to share details of the newly formed OECD Expert Group on Strategic Foresight, announced by OECD Secretary-General Mathias Cormann at the IASEAI Safe & Ethical AI Conference on 6 February 2025.
Who is in the Expert Group?
The dynamic group includes ten globally renowned foresight experts from diverse sectors, disciplines and countries:
- Anne Marie Engtoft Meldgaard, Denmark
- Catherine Fieschi, France/Canada
- Cheryl Chung, Singapore
- Koffi Kouakou, South Africa
- Mikko Dufva, Finland
- Narue Shiki, Brazil
- Peter Padbury, Canada
- Stuart Candy, Australia
- Wendy McGuinness, New Zealand
- Wendy Schultz, United States
The external Chair is Dr Aaron Maniam, a Singaporean national and a Fellow of Practice, as well as the Director of Digital Transformation Education at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.
The variety of experts were selected to bring fresh perspectives, cutting-edge methodologies, and innovative thinking to the OECD.
The group will informally provide support to the OECD Strategic Foresight Unit, as well as the broader OECD foresight ecosystem and the Government Foresight Community. The aim is to ensure foresight becomes an even more powerful tool for shaping modern, evidence-based and anticipatory policies.
Using foresight in 2025
Wendy is honoured to work with this esteemed group of experts. She says, The group is an exciting opportunity to collaborate internationally on foresight. This is always important, especially now when the world is at a critical turning point in fighting the war for climate. I am looking forward to working with the OECD to explore strategic foresight.
During 2025, the Group will work to further embed strategic foresight in policymaking and enhance the OECD’s efforts to support resilient and future-ready policies. We are looking forward to seeing the outputs and will keep you updated.
The OECD’s foresight work
The OECD has long been a champion of strategic foresight and long-term thinking as a core component of effective and modern policy making. It focuses on international collaboration and uses strategic foresight to help policy makers improve the effectiveness of governments by identifying opportunities, challenges, risks and disruptions that may arise over the coming years.
The OECD website says: ‘The global economy and society have become more interconnected and complex, causing increased uncertainties about the future. Strategic foresight is a structured and systematic approach of exploring plausible futures to anticipate and better prepare for change. Strategic foresight is not about predicting a single future. It is about the analysis of plausible futures, which can support better policy making.’
The Institute’s foresight work
Strategic foresight has always been integral to the McGuinness Institute – it’s an essential part of our purpose statement, and our ongoing ForesightNZ project allows us to share useful tools and resources for exploring different futures.
Some examples of the Institute’s Foresight Tools. You can view the Institute’s Foresight Tools and other foresight resources on our ForesightNZ page.
