The iKNOW Project required the development of four horizon scanning strategies:

1. inward-looking top-down or ILTD (where over 2,000 EC funded research projects were scanned by iKNOW Partners);
2. outward-looking top-down or OLTD (where a wide range of knowledge sources outside the European research space, e.g. websites, blogs, news, journal articles, official reports, science fiction books, etc. are scanned by iKNOW Partners),
3. inward-looking bottom-up or ILBU (where EC funded research are scanned by iKNOW Community members) and
4. outward-looking bottom-up or OLBU (where knowledge sources outside the European research space are scanned by iKNOW Community members).