The relationship between people, technology and nature is the common thread running through Sirkka Heinonen's career

Sirkka Heinonen is called the grand old lady of Finnish futures research – and not without reason. Heinonen is one of the builders and pioneers of the field, an active influencer in Finnish society and an internationally recognised researcher.

Futures Finland welcomed her as a guest of the Future Classics evening in December 2022. Future Classics is a member event held every autumn, where pioneers in the field talk about their careers and lives.

Involved in Building the Futures Field in Finland

Sirkka Heinonen if anyone knows the trajectory of future research in Finland. During Heinonen's career, Finnish research has taken its first steps and developed into internationally acknowledged expertise. Heinonen's field of work has consisted of research, teaching and societal influence.

A newly graduated Master of Arts was recruited in 1979 to VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, which considered how the field of research would be brought to Finland. One of the tasks allotted to Heinonen was to find out where the research was carried out, how it was organized in different countries and who were the key people. On the basis of such feasibility studies, the structures of the sector were formed in Finland. From the very beginning, Heinonen has been involved in, for example, the activities of the National Foresight Network and the Finnish Society for Future Studies, and has assisted the Parliamentary Committee on the Future in several hearings and studies.

Heinonen defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Helsinki in 1999. Seven years later, he was appointed professor at the Finland Future Research Centre (FFRC) of the University of Turku. Under his leadership and together with Professor Markku Wilenius, the master's programme in future studies was reformed and later a doctoral programme was launched.

Societal and international influencing

Heinonen considers it important to combine expertise from different fields: the social science, humanities and technical perspectives need each other in order for us to understand the whole.

Heinonen has been interested in the relationships between humans, technology and nature from the very beginning. In his dissertation, she studied the views of ancient Stoic philosophy on the relationship of human beings with nature and technology. "We should value both dimensions of time: not only the future, but also the past. At some point, we have lost our connection to the wisdom of a bygone era. This is the root cause of environmental problems."

Influencing society is important to Heinonen. In his opinion, scientists have a responsibility to produce information to support decision-making and to participate in social debate. This is also reflected in Heinonen's international activities: she is a member of the Club of Rome and the Millennium Project, among other positions. The Millennium Project is a unique global think tank with 71 nodes around the world. The Helsinki Node organises events and manages, for example, the Millennium Project’s Delphi studies in Finland.

Foreseer and maker of a sustainable future

A sustainable future is one of Heinonen's main themes. She has been a member of the Club of Rome since 2005. "The Limits of Growth report received a lot of criticism when it came out in 1972 because it was misunderstood as a forecast. In fact, it was instead a scenario work. Now we can see that one of the scenarios is very accurately coming true."

The current ecological and climate crisis has therefore been known for a long time. Heinonen is of the opinion that science must be communicated, even though people's ability to receive information about the future and act on it is very limited. He writes about future resilience in the recent Club of Rome report ‘Limits and Beyond: 50 years on from The Limits to Growth what did we learn and what's next?’

Resilience can be defined in many different ways. A crisis is an opportunity to learn. The concept of futures resilience, launched by Sirkka, includes the idea of learning, rethinking, renewal.

Heinonen has just returned from the annual meeting of the Club of Rome in Costa Rica. There, the theme was transformation: fundamentally changing the structures of society such as legislation, governance and education, which is a prerequisite for a sustainable future. "For the first time, a lot of indigenous representatives were involved. They have a lot to teach us about preserving the wisdom of the past," says Heinonen.

Nature is also a personally important source of strength for Heinonen. She says she spends time in the woods or on the seashore every day. Another, even more important foundation cornerstone of her life is the family. The spouse and children have been involved in Heinonen's international assignments. She did her doctoral thesis in Holland, where the family was due to the work of her husband.

Methods in support of collaboration

Sirkka Heinonen is also known as the developer of the futures methodology. Because people and interaction are important to him, she has especially developed methods that allow futures research and innovation to be carried out together and translated into practice.

The Futures Clinique is an example of a wide-ranging method. It is based on a futures workshop, but contains more variations and developments, including a futures window developed by Elina Hiltunen, Jerome Glenn's wheel of the future, and Sirkka Heinonen's futures provocation. The idea of the clinique is to boldly bring up societal challenges and find out what they are all about. Together, the participants make a prognosis: they first draw up a diagnosis of the situation and look for solutions, or 'recipes', to it.

Heinonen hopes that futures processes will be initiated at all levels of society. In an era of great crises and instability, we need the experience of being able to influence the future. Children and young people in particular should be involved in building the future.

Futures Studies at present

Today, Heinonen is professor emerita who supervises doctoral students and leads research projects. A lot is happening in this area, and e.g. the EU has woken up to the need for systematic foresight.

Heinonen is a researcher in the multidisciplinary research project Real Estate and Sustainable Crisis Management in Urban Environments (RESCUE) funded by the Academy of Finland. It aims to promote the resilience and crisis preparedness of societies nationally and internationally. Jerome C. Glenn, director of the Millennium Project, recently visited Finland as a guest of the Committee on the Future. As part of the RESCUE project, Heinonen and Glenn implemented a future clinique in the Tripla shopping centre. It simulated a situation in which a total power outage would suddenly occur. "At the Futures Clinique, we can test different scenarios of the future and practice for them," Heinonen says.

As a new research topic, Heinonen mentions hybridization. Hybrid is an old phenomenon and there is a strong presence in this time – we have, for example, hybrid cars, hybrid work, hybrid facilities – but the phenomenon has not been studied much. "In hybrid research, we look at things holistically and create surprising combinations. How can hybrids cause crises or support crises?"

One permanent research theme is the stages of societal development. The agricultural, industrial and information society have already passed. We are living in a period of transition and we are entering the next phase, from which Heinonen uses the concept of ‘digital meanings society’. Meaningfulness is related, for example, to the concept of work: there is not enough work for everyone, but society should continue to offer everyone meaningful activities in the future.

The relationship between human beings, technology and nature is even more topical now than in the early days of Heinonen's career. How do we make technology truly serve people? How do we restore humans’ connection to nature?

"In times of transition, shared visions are needed: what kind of society do we want? We must not just drift into the future.”

Future Classic: Interview with Foresight Pioneer Sirkka Heinonen