Luke is Vice-President for Research and Innovation at the University of Manchester and Professor of Science and Technology Policy and Management in the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at Manchester Business School. He has been on the staff of its precursor institute, PREST, since 1977 and was its Executive Director from 1990-2004. He is responsible for the University’s research strategy and its implementation and for business engagement and commercialisation activities. He continues to be active in research and policy advice to governments and business.

What wild cards do you think might happen in the next 20 years? 

We are defining wild cards as low probability, high impact. My list, in no particular order, is:

• The possible break-up of China into independent provincial governments.

• Declining male fertility in the West, which suddenly starts affecting birth rates.

• A breakthrough, such as a nano discovery, transforms the economics of photovoltaics. Photovoltaics is all about efficiency. I have a feeling that a breakthrough will come from someone working at molecular level on molecular phenomena.

• In terms of geo-politics, it is not very wild, but I think there will be a reversal to protectionism.

• A boom in agriculture, including all kinds of cartelisation, high prices and new investment, possibly linked to GM.

• A rise of eco religion: nature-centred religions worshipping the ecology and the harmony of the Earth.

• Relocalisation of tourism because of geo-political instability, cost and environmental concerns; people more likely to spend their leisure time in areas near to them rather than far from them.

Are these relevant to the EU?

They are all relevant to the EU; and probably all of them, except possibly the male fertility one, are relevant globally.

How do you think it should be addressed by future research, the research agenda at the EU level?

Some have an implication for research priorities. Food and agricultural development should rise in relevant priority. For photovoltaics and nanos, the lesson is not so much about research in that area, but in the idea that we need a more effective system to translate radical ideas from scientific discovery into applications. The other issues are more socio- economic, but they demand substantial socio-economic research to understand and monitor the situation.

Have you already seen some weak signals that lead to that wild card?

I saw a clipping a while ago about how the Chinese government in Beijing had indicted several members of the Shanghai government, reflecting rivalries. Policies are being implemented at regional level amid social tensions. The agriculture boom is not here yet. But there is a threat to some of the world’s major agriculture, through drought and climate change, and to other food supplies, e.g. fish. To produce food effectively, it may be that alternative methods to conventional farming would be needed. Eco religion: there are some small signs, e.g. Paganism is one of the fastest growing religions. It has been officially recognised and the police are entitled to take leave on Pagan festivals if they state that it is their religion. I discussed this with a Catholic priest, whose view was that Catholicism could easily accommodate concern for the environment. So we may see a response in mainstream religion and a change in priorities, if you wanted a very weak signal. I got the idea at Stonehenge, where I saw a druid in robes whose posters were about environmental threats, stating that in his religion this was the top priority. There are some signs of protectionism in comments made in crisis responses. It has not happened yet, but certain politicians speak about it.

We can find some weak signals about the regionalisation of tourism. How do you think the European Commission is responding to this?

The switch to organising research around societal challenges will pick up some of these things, but in other areas there is a tendency more to follow thinking in the mainstream. There is one foresight report which says China will be dominant, rather like we used to say about Japan. All the China policies are based on this, overlooking the fact that China is more complicated. Historically it has been organised more by province than by the centre. So you need to consider which parts of China to have relationships with.

Are there causal relationships between these wild cards?

They are linked to each other. There are probably some underlying drivers linked to them: climate change, resource issues, geopolitics – in many ways they respond to these things. But they do not necessarily cause each other. 

How would you prioritise these for research in the future?

Most of them I guess are already being covered in research; agriculture would be a clear priority. I don’t know whether European research has particularly covered the male fertility problem. It is a sideline in medical studies – research into its causes is not treated as a high priority, and it is linked to many other issues, such as the ageing population. The photovoltaic and nano issues are at the right level of priority; it is how we do the research that needs to change. The others serve as a reminder that we need to keep socioeconomic research as a priority.

Do you think the priority linked to these wild cards already reflects the most pressing issues in the EU? If we connect these to the grand challenges idea?

They reflect some of them, but there are not other equally important issues. I did not mention energy security, social issues which need researching, migration and population change.

If we forget about these wild cards, what are the most pressing issues or problems that we have in the EU that are not sufficiently addressed by research at the moment?

We do not do much research at the moment on water-related issues; we need a lot more on that, water is a pressing issue. Maybe urbanism is another issue, issues around cities.

What about the socio-economic implication of the EU or enlargement of the EU on those particular topics?

There is no great deficit of research about enlargement. There is probably not enough thinking about relationships with some key countries. For example, the relationship with Russia is quite neglected. Do you have insights that you can share about the grand challenges research area? The direction we are going in, of having more integrated research and innovation initiatives allowing us to cover the spectrum from research through to social and economic measures and market measures, is probably very important. ERA Vision should be about efficient research, but also efficient innovation. That is actioned not just by research policy actors, but also by policy actors from other domains.

What do you think our definitions of wild cards and weak signals?

I am happy with the wild card one, it is very straightforward. The weak signal is difficult to define, because it does not have an existence independent of the person or group receiving the signal. An example of this that I was recently told of by a French colleague is the development in China of a GM cotton resistant to the weevil that attacks cotton. They noticed a cluster of papers about this in Chinese. Then they found a paper by a French sociologist, called ‘From Sink to Source’, which found that this weevil had moved away from cotton and was attacking all the other crops. So cotton had transformed from being a sink to absorb this pest to becoming a base for the weevil to attack other crops and disrupt agriculture in an unexpected way. To me that is a weak signal; but probably to an agriculturist – particularly a Chinese one – it is a very strong and obvious one. It depends on who is getting the weak signal: because it is coming to my consciousness, do I take action and respond to it? So you need something in the definition about observable changes which indicate a different perspective from the one held by those receiving it.

Are there interesting lessons from previous foresight projects that you have done?

In ‘FarHorizon’, although it is not a weak signals project, we do employ wild cards as part of the methodology. We have tried it in different ways. In the last workshop we asked the participants to fill in a form before they came, on certain categories to think up wild cards on the future of innovation in Europe. I would take two lessons from that. Firstly, people tend to reflect current trends. So this one is full of things about the collapse of the Eurozone, as that is in the news and strongly affects them. If we had done the same exercise two years ago, it would probably have been about pandemics. Finding things that are contra trend are more interesting sometimes. The other lesson is that we normally have an enjoyable hour identifying these and prioritising them, but it does not really affect what people do in the rest of the workshop.

What do you think are the best methods to identify wild cards and weak signals?

In our project we look at scanning. We looked systematically at the whole of the research projects funded by FP7. Then we are supposed to scan outside FP7, looking at blogs, news. It appears sporadic, lacking a rigorous approach.

The data flowing might depend on the receptor again, because unless you pick them up, you can almost scan any data source, so how do you distinguish between them? There has not been much discussion of the dynamics of the data sources themselves. For example, if you are looking at news sites, you need to have some understanding of what criteria the editorial team are using for a story in the first place. That is my main source, other than when I see something in real life, like the druid. Normally I see little stories on the side in newspapers or on websites, which are often more a signal of something than the main headline. But still someone has already decided that is an interesting item. Blogs also have filters, but maybe fewer.