Foresight is
currently perceived as a critical activity in the development of
innovation policies and corporate strategies. While there are many
descriptions of the benefits of foresight, there is little research on how these benefits are created. In addition, although the view of
innovations has shifted towards a systems understanding, the same has
not happened with foresight, which is largely seen as a process. The
process view and focus on the outcomes has created a situation where the
dynamics between agents involved in foresight is stil lnot well
understood. One emerging approach to improve the understanding of the
dynamics of foresight, and to embed foresight more closely with
innovation management and policy, is the systems view. In this paper, we
build on the systems view of foresight, and study what the elements in
foresight as a system are and how they contribute to the creation of
futures knowledge. Based on the literature, we propose six elements that
are useful for understanding a foresight system and the creation of
futures knowledge: agents, cognitive schemes, strategic objects,
mediating events, memory objects and metaphors. We illustrate the
systems view, the elements and their interaction with two case examples:
one on creating future-orientation in a research and technology
organisation and one on renewing a forest industry through roadmapping.
Based on the elements and the case study, we argue that the strategic
objects and mediating events are important leverage points when steering
foresight as a system.