Foresight information is required on every level of an educational organisation: management, research & development, teaching and administration. Organisations need to anticipate changes of the environment and thus the demands for new skills and qualifications to meet the challenges of world of work. Foren project (2002, 14) defines foresight concept as follows: “Foresight is a systematic, participatory, future intelligence gathering and medium to long term vision building process aimed at present-day decisions and mobilising joint actions.” Foresight is a knowledge dependent process, thus the theoretical framework of this research is based on knowledge management theories and foresight framework. According to Gao, Li and Nakamori (2002), the one and only aim of knowledge management for an organization is to fully utilize available knowledge to enhance the organization’s core competences and competitive advantages. To be able to outline possible futures is a very significant competitive advantage to all kinds of organizations. There is lot of knowledge, information and data in organizations which is not used as efficiently as it could be. Organizations should explore the data so they can discover opportunities, evaluate them and proceed accordingly (Bonabeau 2009). To get the best use from this existing knowledge, information and data it should be handled and analysed collectively. Armistead (1999) asserts that there are three kinds of knowledge processes: knowledge creation, knowledge transfer and knowledge embedding process. Foresight can be seen as a knowledge creation process, which produces solutions to both known and unknown problems and new knowledge. According to Horton (1999), foresight consists of three usually consecutive phases: 1) collection, collation and summarization 2) translation and interpretation 3) assimilation and commitment. When also the personnel take part in the foresight process, they will more likely commit themselves to common decisions. There has been a lot of development work and discussion about foresight in Europe in this decade. One important recent methodological progress has been Adaptive foresight methodology (Eriksson & Weber 2008; Kaivo-oja & Marttinen 2008), which tries to adapt to increasingly complex and uncertain situations by broad and multi-disciplinary exploration and participation. The research question is: • What kind of foresight framework or model would best support an educational organisation? The sub questions are: • How should the personnel participate in the foresight process? • How should the participants transform information into understanding within the foresight framework? • How should educational organisation fully utilize wiki or other electronic platforms in foresight process?

This research is a case study which was carried out in the Lahti University of Applied Sciences in 2008. The data collection methods were interviews and focus groups (see Silverman 2005). The first phase was to conduct a literature review. After that interviews in every faculty of the Lahti University of Applied Sciences were conducted. The interviews were analysed and, based on them, a couple of pilot projects about data gathering were carried out. Based on the interviews and the outcomes of pilot projects, the first concept/model of foresight framework was formulated. In the next phase the first concept/model of foresight framework was evaluated in workshops by experts.

The results of the research describe foresight framework in the case organization. The model for the participation of the personnel in foresight process is developed. The wiki is a part of the foresight model and the case organization has experiences about using wiki in foresight process. The results also highlight that the most important thing is to evaluate foresight model so that it is possible to improve it.