فهرست مطالب roohallah bayat

Science and technology foresight is a collaborative, time-consuming and complex process. These features have led governments to design and implement this process in most countries. Identifying and prioritizing key success factors in the foresight process can help better decision-making in designing and implementing foresight in the country and facilitates budget allocation and resource allocation. Therefore, this study aimed to identify and prioritize key factors for the success of science and technology foresight in Iran.

This study is an applied research from the point of view of purpose. The data were collected in two ways: library and field, and “network analysis” was used to prioritize the factors.

The results of data network analysis showed that 41 key factors affect the success of science and technology foresight in Iran. According to the opinions of the experts, the following 10 factors with a final weight above 0.30 are more important: Establishing workshops in the early stages of the foresight process (0.338), focusing on soft technologies (0.332), forming foresight team (0.329), government requirement and support (0.321), enhancing technology intelligence (0.320), technology attraction alongside technology feasibility (0.317), emerging and interdisciplinary areas (0.313), regularly foresight activities (0.311), focusing on second and third class consequences (0.303), and initial design (0.301).

Special attention to the most important key factors that have the highest final weight in network analysis is recommended to decision makers and government managers responsible for science and technology foresight process in Iran.

Economic, political and social development in any country significantly depends on human capital and the knowledge created by them. Therefore, the immigration of these professionals and experts undoubtedly decreases or stops the rate of speed of development. Hence, maintaining, keeping and helping develop the manpower of these experts is of vital importance. Furthermore, identifying the factors which influence the decisions of these experts and prodigies causing them to migrate would make policy makers more aware of the reasons behind loss of human capital. As a result, new policies can be put in place to stop or decrease the future loss of human capital. This paper aims to identify and prioritize influencing factors on the brain drain trend so that it may be used for future policy-making as we are now in the midst of a forth wave of this phenomenon, and to also provide strategic futuristic tools. This was achieved using the Delphi Method. The findings obtained by this paper show that, in order of greatest degree of influence to least degree of influence, educational factors, livelihood, social factors, political factors, and economical factors will be the most important elements affecting the brain drain trend in the following years. This paper also provides recommendations, which are based on research findings, for policymakers to take into account.