Five PCARRD technical staff are set to participate in the “Technology Foresight Training Workshop and International Seminar 2007” to be held on October 22-26 in Taipei. The Science and Technology Policy Research Information Center (STPI) of Taiwan is sponsoring the event. PCARRD’s participation in this activity marks the strengthening of its collaboration with STPI on technology foresight.

STPI is a nonprofit organization under Taiwan’s National Applied Research Laboratories, which aims to become “a national think tank on sci-tech policy research and a major dissemination gateway of sci-tech integrated information and value-added services.”

The workshop-seminar features the sharing of technology foresight methodologies by experts from Japan and Korea. Participants are expected to gain understanding of international trends and learn about successful experiences in foresight research.

Technology foresight is gaining worldwide recognition among policy-making bodies as a powerful instrument for establishing common views on future development strategies. It is defined as “the process involved in systematically attempting to look into the longer-term future of science, technology, the economy, and society with the aim of identifying the areas of strategic research and the emerging generic technologies likely to yield the greatest economic benefit.” This technique helps provide inputs for the formulation of technology policies and strategies, and supports innovation.

PCARRD, with its long track record of setting directions for research and development (R&D) in the agriculture, forestry, and natural resources sectors, has been doing technology foresight-like activities through regularly formulating its R&D status and directions in various commodities and subsectors; the crafting of its corporate plan; and providing of inputs to the National Science and Technology Plans of the Department of Science and Technology. It needs, however, to further refine its techniques in order to have more targeted and strategic scenario-building and planning.

The training-seminar is expected to strengthen PCARRD’s in-house capacity on technology foresight to provide a more systematic approach on identifying emerging generic technologies where there is legitimate case for government support, and where it could yield the greatest economic and social benefits. The benefits to STPI may not be evident in the short term. However, the outputs of technology foresight activities of PCARRD may guide Taiwanese investors interested in Philippine agribusiness. (Richard B. Daite, S&T Media Service)