Orienting European innovation systems towards grand challenges and the roles that FTA can play

A strong research and innovation policy discourse has emerged in recent years around the need to address ‘grand challenges’, particularly at EU level. This paper highlights the contributions that future-oriented technology analysis (FTA) might make to orienting innovation processes towards grand challenges. It takes a ‘systems of innovation’ approach and focuses on the structural and functional aspects of such systems to consider the relevant roles of FTA. In this context, FTA can generate ‘informing’, ‘structuring’ and ‘capacity-building’ benefits while enabling a shift in innovation foci towards grand challenges. However, FTA could be better exploited to deliver its structuring and capacity-building benefits, which are hardly recognised in the EU’s existing innovation policy instruments, in order to effectively reorient the EU’s innovation systems towards grand challenges.