What is the WI-WE bank?

Wednesday 4th of May 2011 by Rafael Popper

The WIWE Bank is an interactive Web 2.0 environment interconnecting knowledge on wild cards and weak signals (WIWE) potentially shaping or shaking the future of science, technology and innovation in Europe.

Users and visitors of the WIWE Bank will be able to:

• map wild cards and weak signals (WI-WE)
• assess wild cards and weak signals (WI-WE); and
• interconnect wild cards and weak signals (WI-WE) with:
  - 17 thematic research areas,
  - 6 strategic pan-European objectives and
  - 21 Grand Challenges of the 21^st Century.

So far we have mapped 417 wild cards and 314 weak signals (a total of 731 WI-WE). From these, 177 are nominated and 554 are further discussed using three levels of characterisation: basic (237); advanced (119); and fully-fledged (226).

To produce the WI-WE Bank, the iKNOW Project has combined several methods, including:

Structured Scanning of EC FP7 research and foresight projects;

• Open Scanning of other EU sources, IGOs, RTOs, government, business, NGOs, lawmakers/politicians, scientists/researchers, celebrities/artists, blogs, social networks, TV/radio, corporate press, community press, fiction books/movies, magazines, academic journals, foresight/futures, history/past event, etc.)
• Interviews (mainly to experts on foresight, S&T, and European Research Area related issues)
• Workshops (in Finland, UK, Germany and Czech Republic)
• Surveys

We used Web 2.0 tools so as to promote a bottom-up process whereby different stakeholders are capable of capturing and assessing the relevance of a wide range of wild cards and weak signals (WI-WE). However, in order to pilot and populate the system with high quality entries, the 2009 WI-WE mapping has been more of a top-down process carried out by leading foresight practitioners in six institutions: PREST Institute of Innovation Research of the University of Manchester (UK), Finland Futures Research Centre (Finland), Z_punkt (Germany), RTC North (UK), Technology Centre of the Academy of Sciences (Czech Republic) and the Interdisciplinary Centre for Technology Analysis and Forecasting (Israel).