Options for making responsive future strategy to foster sustainability transitions in the German agri-food sector: a Delphi-based approach

Abstract

In response to pressing global challenges, sustainability transitions research has emerged as an interdisciplinary field focused on fundamental changes, necessitating novel approaches for strategy-making from research and innovation. Foresight practitioners need to extend their well-established methodological toolkit, which can inform subsequent planning processes about managing conflicts and shaping futures, to include the articulation of response options for contributing to the creation of more sustainable future systems. This research aims to contribute to this need by exploring future options characterized by discrepancies. Drawing from the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) literature to understand discrepancies between “desirability” and “probability” of future options as missed opportunities to secure social desirability in the future or as threats to it, this research argues for the collective identification and anticipation of discrepancies to reflect on options for making more responsive strategies. Thus, informed by RRI, a Delphi exercise was modified to engage experts from the German agri-food sector (n = 21) to assess divergent innovation-driven changes in the German agri-food sector that had been collectively anticipated and reflected upon beforehand. The results speak for a reduction of complexity by revealing specific actions necessary to redirect research and innovation processes away from unsustainable paths, as well as identifying determinants of discrepancies to do good or avoid harm.