Winter 2023 // Canadian Government Executive / 17 FUTURE TEST APPROACH Examples of the future test approach Will the program be used by the targets in the way envisioned. For the small business venture capital credit to work, venture capital firms need to value the credit as being sufficient to cause them to make investments in small businesses. As well, for the program to work small businesses must accept this venture capital investment. Competitive intelligence was used to develop profiles on selected investment capital firms and small businesses to future test whether they would act in the way required. Interviews were also done with each of these groups as well. The conclusion based on using competitive intelligence and market research techniques was that venture capital firms welcomed the credits but small businesses did not welcome venture capital which many referred to as “vulture capital”. The program would not work. In another case a loan guarantee program to assist alternative energy firms failed because although the companies would use it, the banks in that country did not want to provide loans to firms in this industry. Profiling and market research approaches were used in this case as well. When the program is actioned will the desired outcome make sense any more? In the case of the incentive for investing in small business, results would be seen quickly (two years). But the nanotechnology program (and telecommunications legislation that used this approach) would require many years to see the impact of the program. It takes a lot of time for a company to develop and then take to market a nanotechnology product. Now add in the amount of time to develop the legislation, get it through Parliament and depending on the country the Senate and then the time to fully implement it and you have between one year and 20+ years between the idea and the implementation. David Wolfe a noted economist from University of Toronto said that impact of decisions being made by government today on Autonomous Vehicles will impact what we see in AV’s in thirty years. Key in all this is that while statistical databases, market research, industry consultation and the like are very important in developing programs, policies and legislation, these are typically routed either in the past (statistics) or today. This means that as part of the future test approach the question is asked what the environment will look like next year (tax policy) or in 20 years (nanotechnology) and how will the program. Let’s call this the program temporal period. For the small business venture capital investment program, it took roughly one year to get the program running and another year for the investment firms to start applying for it. In the nanotechnology program it was two years to get it past the legislature but it would be another five years before the R&D investment would result in the commercialization activities envisioned. Future test asks the question for example in the case of the nanotechnology program, will the market in seven years still want the products envisioned by the program? Will other countries/companies have leapfrogged the intended products. Programs are normally developed in the context of the problem today that needs to be fixed, future test in this sense looks at whether the “fix” will make sense when the results of the program occur. Future test involves techniques that provide a structured approach for examining policy, program and proposals from the perspective of its ability to succeed based on an external environmental perspective.
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