Drilling and Blasting to Learn Scenario Construction: Experimenting with Causal Layered Analysis as a Disruption of Scenario Work

Abstract

Scenario thinking is one of the key elements of futures studies, and therefore, “Scenario Thinking” is one of the first compulsory courses in the Master’s Degree Programme in Futures Studies at the University of Turku. Scenario methods are continuously evolving, and our educational practices must reflect recent developments while giving a clear outline of the big picture. Furthermore, increasing interest is being taken in hybrid methods, and such hybridity can also be introduced to teaching scenario thinking. This article discusses an experiment of using causal layered analysis (CLA) to complement and deepen scenarios made by student groups for a Finnish company during an introductory course on scenario thinking. During a first-year master’s degree course, a two-hour CLA session was conducted, and student groups were instructed to include the results into their scenario reports. From a methodological point of view, we discuss using CLA as a disruption in the middle of the scenario process to increase reflexivity. From a pedagogical point of view, we discuss how a relatively complex method combination (CLA and scenarios) can be made accessible to first-year master’s students conducting their first scenario study. As material, we use our own firsthand experiences from the scenario course and the CLA session as well as a subsequent survey with students. The intention of the paper is to quickly distribute educational practices for assessment by the futures education community and, thus, contribute to improving the state of futures studies and foresight education.

Keywords

causal layered analysis scenarios hybrid methods experimentation teaching

Introduction

Scenario methods in all their varied forms undoubtedly form one of the foundations of futures studies (Bell 1997), and therefore, the essentials of scenario thinking must be effectively transmitted to students of futures studies. However, scenario methods are continuously evolving, and our educational practices must also reflect recent developments while giving a clear outline of the big picture. Furthermore, there is increasing interest in hybrid methods in futures studies, and such hybridity can also be introduced to scenario thinking and construction, and used as a resource in teaching (Hayward et al. 2012; Miller 2007; Rhisiart et al. 2015; Sharma and Yang 2015; Varho and Tapio 2013).

This article discusses an experiment of using causal layered analysis (CLA) as an intervention to complement and deepen a scenario process conducted by student groups during an introductory course on scenario thinking. Accordingly, the hybrid method here is a novel application of CLA within a scenario process. The context is the first year master’s degree scenario course within the Master’s Degree Programme in Futures Studies at the University of Turku, where a two-hour CLA session was conducted, and student groups were instructed to include the results into their course scenario reports. The scenario exercise was conducted for a Finnish company from the financial sector who provided the focal question and an opportunity for de-briefing after student groups conducted independent scenario work. Making scenarios for an existing company ensures that the exercise is anchored in a real-life decision context and enhances the motivation of the students.

In our article, we will explore three central themes. First, from a methodological point of view, we will discuss disrupting the scenario process by using an exercise such as our CLA session, and relate this discussion to recent literature on improving scenario methodology. The role of disruptions and discontinuities in scenarios has been extensively discussed, but we are interested in using disruptions in the scenario process to increase reflexivity and prevent path-dependence in the process. Second, as a related methodological point, we will discuss placing the CLA session in the middle of a scenario process rather than before or after, as previously discussed in the CLA literature. Finally, from a pedagogical point of view, we will discuss how a relatively complex method combination (CLA and scenarios) can be made accessible to first-year master’s students conducting their first scenario study.

As material, we will use our own first-hand experiences from the scenario course and the CLA session as well as a subsequent survey conducted approximately five months after the CLA session. We will explore, first, how successful the experiment was and, second, what could be learned for subsequent courses and to what extent the approach can be scaled up to other scenario exercises. The theoretical context is provided by recent literature on improving scenario methodology as well as literature on CLA. The intention of the paper is to quickly distribute educational practices for assessment by the futures education community and, thus, contribute to improving the state of futures studies and foresight education.

Theoretical Background

The Evolving Theory and Practice of Scenarios

Scenarios have a long history in futures studies and foresight, emerging after the Second World War in both the military and business fields. The history and evolution of scenario methods has been outlined in a number of articles (Bradfield et al. 2005; Burt 2007; Hughes 2009), and scenarios have been categorized into different types in terms of content, method of construction, and various other variables (Amer et al. 2013; Börjeson et al. 2006; van Notten et al. 2003). Scenarios, thus, represent not one clearly defined method but a family of interlinked futures research methods.

In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in developing scenario methods and especially strengthening their theoretical grounding. Notably, two recent special issues of Technological Forecasting & Social Change have focused on improving scenario thinking (Wright et al. 2013; Wright et al. 2017). There is growing awareness in the futures field that it is important to improve scenario methodology and take it further, instead of only continuously applying scenario thinking to various topics. The starting point for this development work is the realization that scenarios are often successful in practice, but the theoretical grounding of scenario building is generally considered somewhat lacking (Chermack 2005; Derbyshire 2016; B. MacKay and Tambeau 2013). Having a solid theoretical base is especially important when teaching scenario thinking at the university level, because university education implies critical thinking and questioning, not only transmission of dogmatic truths about established methods.

The evolving nature of scenario thinking has been noted in the Master’s Degree Programme in Futures Studies at the University of Turku, and the programme strives to follow and illustrate recent developments in scenario thinking. One key trend in scenario thinking is creatively combining methods including experiential methods and gaming (Heinonen et al. 2017). At the same time, an introductory scenario course must be relatively clear-cut so that students gain an understanding of the essentials of scenario thinking, focusing on chosen scenario types rather than a chaotic mix of approaches and methods. In the following, we will discuss combining CLA into a scenario process from a particular perspective: as a disruption of the scenario process. The disruption serves two purposes: crafting deeper, more reflexive scenarios and transmitting to students what we consider essential in scenario thinking. These essential features include creativity, versatile approaches, open perspectives, different types of gathering and analyzing data, and critical interpretations (see also the guiding principles in Wright and Cairns 2011, 24). As a case study, we will discuss a CLA exercise conducted during a first-year master’s degree scenario thinking course.

Reframing and re-perceiving have been essential parts of scenario thinking for a long time, especially in approaches that are inspired by the “intuitive logics” or Shell scenario methods (Bradfield et al. 2005). Pierre Wack’s influential papers already discussed “the gentle art of re-perceiving,” and considered change in managerial mind-sets as a crucial part of scenario planning (Burt 2010). Ramírez and Wilkinson (2016) also highlight the importance of reframing, as an approach similar to consideration of alternative imageries of futures. They conceive the conventional framing as “a lens, device, or type of filter that both includes and excludes” (ibid., 218). The process of reframing in a scenario process allows the learners to re-perceive the world, which helps them to identify new opportunities and propose novel options for action. In an ideal situation, scenario planning consists of several iterative cycles of reframing/re-perception. (Ramírez and Wilkinson 2016, 10–12, 17). Gordon and Glenn (2018) advocate interactive scenarios as becoming the mainstream in future scenario construction. The scenarios will be built and tested with various interactive techniques. CLA provides an established interactive method for reframing assumptions about futures.

Causal Layered Analysis as Disruption of the Scenario Process

CLA is a futures research method with roots in critical futures studies, post-structuralism, and post-colonial thought (Inayatullah 1998; Inayatullah and Milojević 2015). CLA is a nonpredictive method where the intention is to question current assumptions about issues and futures and, thus, enable consideration of transformative scenarios that are radically different from the present. The core of CLA is the structure of four layers of depth (litany, system, worldview, myth/metaphor), which are used to deconstruct and reframe issues (Inayatullah 1998). CLA and scenarios are a natural fit because the notion of reframing one’s current perceptions and discovering alternative perspectives is strongly present in both (Bradfield et al. 2015; Inayatullah 2004; Ramírez and Wilkinson 2016; Wright and Goodwin 2009). In the early literature, CLA was seen to be best used before scenario building because it opens thinking to create richer scenarios, either scenarios based on different worldviews or different types of scenarios according to the CLA layers (Inayatullah 1998). In subsequent developments, it has been suggested that CLA may be used as a method of testing and deepening draft scenarios after they have been constructed (Heinonen et al. 2017; Inayatullah 2004).

Instead of using CLA before or after building scenarios, we suggest a third alternative notion of the role of CLA as disruption in the middle of a scenario process and present a case study from the education context. The role of scenarios in studying possible disruptions and discontinuities has been explored (Bruun et al. 2002; Burt 2007; van Notten et al. 2005). However, here, we are making a different argument: we are discussing the scenario process as a disruption of organizational business-as-usual, and the disruption of the scenario process itself by using CLA in the middle of the process. The placing of such a CLA exercise in the scenario process is illustrated in Figure 1. The specific scenario process used in the case study is presented in more detail in the following section.

Figure 1.

CLA as a disruption of the scenario process.

Scenarios have been conceptualized as a “liminal space” (McKiernan 2015) because they interrupt the ordinary functioning of an organization, enabling deeper strategic conversation before returning to everyday business again (van der Heijden 2005). In this article, we suggest that CLA can be fruitfully conceptualized as a disruption within an otherwise linear scenario process, opening the driving forces and tentative scenarios to critique before continuing the process. Seen in this way, from the perspective of an organization, CLA can be seen as a disruption within a disruption—a nested disruption.

Why is the disruption of CLA useful within the scenario process that already opens new horizons and reframes issues? There are two arguments in favor of such “disruption within a disruption.” First, periodical reflective pauses during a linear foresight process are useful because they prevent path-dependent lock-in (Lahtinen et al. 2017). If team members do not periodically pause to consider the direction of the process, the quality of the results may be significantly lower because members may be committed to erroneous and damaging decisions made during the process. In the context of scenarios, the greatest risk is prematurely narrowing the discussion of phenomena and their possible futures. A path-dependent scenario process may ironically become like a funnel where past choices, such as choice of driving forces, limit present options. For this reason, Wright and Cairns (2011, 24) emphasize that although the scenario process is seemingly linear, new ideas may be brought in at any stage of the process. We claim that CLA conducted in the middle of a scenario process can significantly help in preventing path-dependent lock-in by expanding the boundaries that are put on the scenario logics, which may be due to cognitive biases (Wright and Goodwin 2009) and path-dependence in the process.

Second, from a pedagogical perspective, the CLA exercise simulates a scenario process for the students from an organizational viewpoint. Since the scenario process in this specific context is “business as usual” for the students learning it on the course, the CLA as a disruption is seen by students in the same way as the overall scenario process is seen by an organization that has not worked with scenarios before. Thus, CLA within the scenario process becomes analogous to scenarios within an organization’s daily business. Therefore, it gives students the experience of having their process disrupted. Tolerance for such disruption could even be conceived as a learning outcome in futures studies education.

Case: CLA Exercise on the “Scenario Thinking” Course

“Scenario Thinking” is one of the compulsory core courses on the Master’s Degree Programme in Futures Studies at the University of Turku. On the course, students conduct a mini scenario study for a Finnish company. The course has been taught since 2011, and it has evolved significantly through nearly a decade of teaching experience. For each course, a different company is chosen as the scenario client. Time allowing, the choice of the company is made collectively based on the reflections during the lectures. In 2017, the scenario client was a large company from the Finnish financial sector, and the focal question given by the company was broadly, “What societal phenomena will affect the future and the company?” The company was interested in exploring the challenges of digitalization and the changing customer experience. Since the overall question was so broad and exploratory, for educational reasons, the student groups were required to narrow their focus to a more manageable focal question. In the scenario study, a modified Stanford Research Institute scenario approach was used. The approach belongs to the “intuitive logics” school of scenario methods (Amer et al. 2013; Bradfield et al. 2005; Ralston and Wilson 2006). The steps of the scenario process and the placing of CLA on this specific course are presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Steps of Scenario Building and the Placement of CLA in the Case Study.

Step	Responsible actor
1. Identify focal issue or decision	Broad question provided by the scenario client, narrowed down by student groups
2. Identify key forces in the local environment	Student groups working during and between lectures
3. Identify driving forces
4. Rank by importance and uncertainty
5. Select scenario logicsCLA
6. Flesh out the scenarios
7. Implications 8. Select indicators for monitoring	Optional de-briefing together with the scenario client in a meeting at the head office
9. Evaluate alternative strategies

Note. CLA = causal layered analysis.

On October 3, 2017, an experimental CLA session was conducted in the middle of the scenario process. The session lasted one and a half hours. The total number of participants was eighteen, and the students were divided into three scenario groups. The students continued work on their CLA analyses afterward and reported their CLA results as part of their scenario reports for the course.

The session began with the students presenting their driving forces and scenario axes as a sub-task from previous lectures. This was followed by a brief fifteen-minute introduction to the basics of CLA. CLA is a versatile method that may be applied in numerous ways (e.g., Inayatullah and Milojević 2015). For the sake of simplicity, in this case, CLA was presented as a three-step process, where the first step is to dig down from the litany and map assumptions, then the issue is reframed horizontally to discover alternatives, and finally the worldview, system, and litany are redefined on the basis of the renewed metaphor. This is a streamlined version of the “cookbook approach” presented by de Simone (2004). The process formed the core of the students’ CLA work (see Figure 2).

Figure 2.

Template for the CLA group work.

In our experience, it is crucial to carefully select the focal issue in a CLA session because the method itself is so open and encourages creative thinking. Otherwise the CLA session may become simply chaotic, and the results would be incommensurable and difficult to utilize in a scenario report. The focal issue for CLA exercise was different from the focal issue for the whole scenario work. Several alternative approaches were considered to be the focus of analysis:

Scenario axes, to ensure that they cover the most useful or most interesting axes of uncertainty

The scenario client company, to provide a new metaphor for their operations in the future

The digital era in general, or different sectors of digital services such as mobility and health care

The customer experience in the future

Our choice of focal issue for the CLA exercise was ultimately guided by our consideration that CLA is most suitable for complex societal issues, which may be viewed from several perspectives and which are strongly linked to the lived experience of individuals. Thus, we chose two anchoring elements for the CLA: key ethical issues and the consumer perspective. Therefore, at the beginning of the group work, students were asked to choose one ethical issue from a list of three that were prepared as options: “Privacy and the feeling of security,” “Wellbeing,” and “Freedom and autonomy.” Then, students were asked to imagine how that ethical issue could be different from today in a consumer’s life in 2030, considering the driving forces and tentative scenarios that they had developed in their groups. This formed the basic litany, which was to be broken down into its assumptions according to the CLA layers (system, worldview, myth/metaphor). Next, the litany was to be reimagined on the basis of an alternative metaphor. Students were specifically instructed not to go too much into detail in the system layer, because otherwise the discussion on system dynamics could take up most of the time and students would lose the unique aspects of CLA, which are on the worldview and myth layers. The template used in the CLA process is presented in Figure 2 above.

Out of the three student groups, two groups chose “Wellbeing,” and one group chose “Freedom and autonomy.” None of the groups chose “Privacy and the feeling of security.” At the end of the session, each of the three student scenario groups presented the main points of their analysis and their reflections on the process, using five minutes per group. Later, the students also received written feedback and comments on their work and instructions how to integrate them into their scenario reports. We will describe the key insights from the groups’ CLA work in the “Results” section, followed by a discussion of whether and how the scenario process was disrupted in the “Discussion” section.

Survey of Student Perspectives

Roughly five months after the CLA session, a survey was conducted to collect students’ perspectives on the session after they had finished the “Scenario Thinking” course. The survey included ten statements on a five-step Likert scale (from “I strongly disagree” to “I strongly agree”), two drop-down menus to select the most interesting and most challenging CLA layer, and two open questions (the questionnaire is presented in the appendix). The questions are grouped around two main themes: (1) students’ experiences during the CLA session and (2) perceived impacts of the session on the scenario work.

Regarding students’ experiences, students were asked, for instance, whether they felt frustrated at some point during the exercise. The expectation is that coping with discomfort and emotions is part of the process of learning (Bradfield et al. 2015), particularly with such a challenging combination of methods. Students were also asked whether the session was seen as motivating and as overly complicated.

Regarding impacts, students were asked whether the session helped their understanding of CLA and of scenario thinking. Importantly, students were asked whether they considered that the exercise provided added value to the scenario work. They were also asked whether they are likely to use CLA in the future, indicating sustained interest in the method. In the following, we will present reflections first on the exercise itself and then on the survey results.

Results

Reflection on the CLA Exercise and the End Results

The CLA task was clearly challenging for student groups, and the provided one and a half hours was the absolute minimum for this kind of analysis. Simply getting acquainted with CLA required a considerable amount of time, and it was a rather heavy cognitive load to reflect on the driving forces, the tentative scenarios, the chosen ethical issue, and the structure of CLA at the same time. Therefore, some fatigue was visible in the student groups’ work. On the other hand, one key intention in CLA is to unsettle comfortable truths, and therefore, a certain amount of unease is part of a good CLA session.

Even though the dialogue and learning process are more important than the resulting CLA tables, we will mention some points regarding the CLA tables that the student groups produced. In terms of results, the student groups did well. Every group was able to create a coherent presentation of their CLA exercise and integrate it into their scenario report. This created an added value to the report especially from the CLA’s metaphor layer. The resulting CLA tables reflected differences in the groups’ approaches. For instance, one group focused largely on their scenario driving forces, while another group focused on their chosen ethical question, well-being. One group provided a rather long list of bullet points for each layer, while another group provided a table that was perhaps even too condensed. This variation was expected because the instructions allowed freedom and flexibility in reporting the results.

Survey Results

From the eighteen students present at the session, five answered the survey. The results need to be interpreted cautiously due to the limited number of responses and possible selection bias, that is, the students with positive experiences may be most likely to answer. Interpreting the survey results is also challenging because most of the students continued their studies on futures methods after the session, including an additional seminar session on CLA. Thus, it is unclear what was learned during the session on the “Scenario Thinking” course and what was learned during subsequent studies. Nevertheless, the results yield some interesting insights that are presented in the following.

On the Likert scale questions, the highest mean scores were on the items “The CLA exercise improved the dialogue and discussion within my scenario group” (4.4) and “I understand the main ideas of the CLA method” (4.2). This is a good starting point, since enabling dialogue is one of the key aspects of both scenarios and CLA (Inayatullah 1998; van der Heijden 2005). Discerning the effects of improved dialogue from the CLA tables or the scenario reports is difficult, but already the experience of improved dialogue is important. Since students believed that they had understood the main ideas of the CLA method, the short length of the introductory lecture is justified. Most of the students who responded also felt that this kind of exercise could be included in the scenario course in the future (one student disagreed, mean score 3.8).

As expected, some students felt frustrated at some points during the exercise. The results on CLA providing added value to scenario processes and helping to understand scenario thinking were ambivalent. The same was true for the question whether the exercise was too complicated. In addition, one respondent strongly disagrees with the statement “The CLA exercise was motivating.” Taken together, these findings suggest that the links between CLA and the notions of reframing in scenario thinking could be clarified further to students to motivate them. In addition, the debriefing for the CLA exercise could be allowed more time. This way, methodological complexity and occasional frustration could help learning rather than becoming obstacles for some students. In the final “comments” question, one student suggested that the CLA process could contain at least two iterations with feedback in between.

The worldview and myth/metaphor layers were predictably viewed as both the most interesting (three and two respondents, respectively) and most difficult (two and two respondents, respectively) to work on. One student indicated that the system layer was the most difficult. The system layer was deliberately not explored in depth, as explained above in the description of the case, and thus understandably not seen as highly interesting. However, it is interesting to note that some students considered the worldview layer more interesting or challenging than the myth/metaphor layer, which is supposedly the least visible and the most difficult to express in words (Inayatullah 1998). This suggests that in this case study, myth/metaphor may have been interpreted relatively lightly, as an intuitively suitable proverb or figure of speech, whereas worldview required a more substantive connection to the issue under discussion.

Discussion and Conclusion

In the following, we will reflect on the implications of the CLA exercise from the perspective of teaching complex methods and their combinations to first-year futures studies students, and moreover suggest some general implications for CLA and scenario thinking. Pedagogically, the session seemed to be successful in creating space for reflexive and critical thinking, even though the timetable was challenging. This is indicated by the agreement on the survey questions “The CLA exercise improved the dialogue and discussion . . .” and “CLA brought relevant new perspectives . . .” from those students who answered the questionnaire. However, due to the small number of respondents and possible selection bias, the answers need to be interpreted cautiously. In any case, we expect that all learning outcomes will not be immediately apparent, and it will require repeated exposure to scenarios and CLA to construct the understanding of both methods and their combination.

We provided a demonstration of using a disruptive session within a scenario process to “force” reflexive thinking and prevent path-dependence. Based on the survey results, the session was certainly experienced as disruptive and mostly as constructive at least in the longer term. The disruption mainly took place as an opportunity to step outside the linear scenario process and observe the group’s work on a meta-level. To our knowledge, none of the student groups concretely changed their scenario axes or logics after the session, and thus, the disruption did not result in radical changes of direction. This may also be due to the time constraints for completing the reports. However, in the survey, three students felt that CLA brought relevant new perspectives to their scenario work, which seems to indicate more subtle effects such as increased understanding of driving forces. Further interpretation of the results of the CLA intervention would require a more elaborate research design, including, for instance, surveys before and after the session as well as close analysis of draft scenario logics before and after the intervention.

The results of this experiment cannot be applied directly to scenario processes because the course context differed from a “real-life” scenario process. Most importantly, the students were outsiders from the perspective of the scenario client company, and they were in the process of learning scenario methodology and getting acquainted with the topics relevant to their scenario work. Thus, they could not begin with deconstructing their business-as-usual thinking, which they had not yet acquired. If scenarios are conducted by company insiders, using CLA before scenarios is more justifiable to explore and deconstruct preconceptions (Inayatullah 1998).

In addition, because the students were first-year futures studies students, the scenario process in the case study employed a rather standard intuitive logics sequence of steps, except for the CLA intervention in the middle, as indicated in Table 1 in the “Case” section. The steps progressed from identifying the focal issue, key forces, and driving forces to ranking and selecting scenario logics, followed by the CLA intervention, and finally fleshing out the scenarios and considering their implications. Apart from the CLA intervention, the scenario process itself was not altered. The justification for the standard scenario sequence is that students need to learn the basic method before introducing different variations. In the educational context, it is important to maintain the balance between experimentation and providing students a clear conception of the essentials of scenario thinking. This means introducing enough methodological complexity to foster creative thinking and even frustration to some degree but avoiding overly complicated methods that may demotivate and harm learning. As one student put it in a survey response, “As it is, the Scenario Thinking course is already filled with new concepts to learn and steps to perform.” A CLA intervention in a standard scenario process is suitable for an introductory course, but more elaborate hybrid methods are probably best reserved for advanced courses.

In scenario processes outside the educational context, however, it would be interesting to study how the CLA disruption of the scenario process relates to various other “augmented” intuitive logics models (e.g. Bradfield et al. 2016; Derbyshire and Wright 2017; R. B. MacKay and Stoyanova 2017; Wright and Goodwin 2009). For instance, Derbyshire and Wright (2017) suggest understanding change using Aristotelian “material causes,” “formal causes,” and “final causes”; Bradfield et al. (2016) argue for in-depth historical analysis; and R. B. MacKay and Stoyanova (2017) argue for use of sociological concepts to study causality. This kind of extended causal and historical analysis could be contrasted with the emphasis on worldviews and metaphors provided by CLA, thus further unravelling causal complexity. Moreover, these approaches could be complementary because the proposed extended causal analyses are centered on the early stages of the scenario process and the role of researchers, while CLA as disruption provides depth to the interactive later phases.

In subsequent studies, researchers could also ask critical questions regarding the use of CLA in teaching and in scenario processes. For instance, could a deliberately brief discussion of the system layer lead to a decreased understanding of complex system dynamics? This is a risk especially if CLA is interpreted in an overly objective manner as providing a full explanation of an issue rather than multiple subjective perspectives on an issue.

We have presented our model for including a CLA intervention into an educational scenario process for review and discussion by the futures teaching community. We argue that disrupting a scenario process by using CLA helps teach many of the important elements of scenario thinking, including creative thinking, critical questioning, and coping with discomfort. Subsequent developments will no doubt enrich the model further.

Footnotes

Appendix

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Matti Minkkinen

Sirkka Heinonen

Author Biographies

Matti Minkkinen is a researcher and doctoral candidate at Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku. His research interests cover qualitative futures research methodology, futures consciousness and the topic areas of privacy, security and digital futures. He teaches courses on ethics of futures studies and futures research methods in practice at the master’s programme in futures studies.

Sirkka Heinonen is a professor in futures research at Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku. Her research interests include sustainable information society, urban futures, futures learning, renewable energy, and hybrid methods as well as philosophy of futures studies. She teaches at the master’s programme in futures studies.

Marjukka Parkkinen is a project researcher and doctoral candidate at Finland Futures Research Centre. She works in different research projects, currently focusing on the topics of value networks and emerging technologies, renewable energy and circular economy. Her dissertation explores discursive production of futures and futures rhetoric in governmental foresight.

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