Subproject 4: Competing for the Future? Entrepreneurial Future Studies between Competition and Cooperation

• Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Elke Seefried

The PhD-project investigates the relationship between competition and cooperation by looking at the contemporary history of entrepreneurial futures studies. Emerged in the context of the Cold War strategic and technological forecasting and planning boom, the field of futures studies underwent fundamental changes since the 1970s. In Western Europe, next to associations and publicly funded institutes, an entrepreneurial mode of exploring the future was established. The project focuses on departments of strategic planning and foresight in companies, examining their modes of working and knowledge-production, the practices of cooperation and competition as well as the resulting epistemic effects from the 1970s to the early 2000s. It is to explore if and to what extent the futures studies departments reinforced self-conceptions and practices of competition as part of an economization of the sciences. The project compares German and French companies, as futures studies had generated particular public and political attention in both countries. It will focus on two automobile companies and two insurance companies that installed departments of strategic planning. Modes of cooperation and competition will be assessed 1) between units of different companies, 2) between entrepreneurial and publicly funded futures studies departments as well as 3) in different national contexts.