Chairman
Icelandic Center for Future Studies

Presentation |Futures for innovation in Iceland, the Fuzzy Front End

Karl Friðriksson is the chairman of the Icelandic Center for Future Studies and managing director of Human resources and marketing at the Innovation Center of Iceland. He has worked for decades in the fields of marketing, innovation, product development and future studies with emphases on scenario planning. He has extensive experience in strategic planning, future studies and clusters for companies and municipalities, as well as applied benchmarking. Karl is a certified project manager with a professional certification in the field of product development from The Product Development & Management Association in the USA and trained facilitator in field of cluster management from The European Foundation for Cluster Excellence He has authored host of articles, books and other publications in the field of management.

There is growing interest in probing the interaction of the disciplines of Innovation and the study of the future. There is evidence that there is added value in applying methods of Futures Studies at various phases of innovation, but not least of all in the pre-active phase of the development or at the Fuzzy Front End.