Abstr actBuilding on state-of-the-art techniques for forecasting future developments in technology, business, economics, and other areas of human endeavor, we describe a novel methodology for adaptive contingency planning at the strategic initiative level. Complementing normal business planning that uses a schedule based on predictions tied to dates in the future, we use a new kind of early warning signal called a signpost to trigger the execution of corresponding new recommended actions.
Intr oductionA signpost is a recognizable potential future event that signals a change of importance to an enterprise. The specificity of signpost events makes it possible to generate contingency plans and to perform costbenefit analyses so that the contingency plans are comparable with and prioritizable against current business plans, allowing for a smooth integration of new plans with old. The result is a set of missions or initiatives tied to the occurrence of recognizable events rather than a rigid time schedule. This restructuring of strategy allows for better timing of actions to market conditions, enables advance planning for disruptive change, provides a systematic way to identify and monitor new business opportunities, and turns threats into opportunities.The traditional technology roadmap approach to planning consists of extrapolating current trends and exploring the likelihood of meeting current challenges. This approach is appropriate for business planning for a three to five year horizon, within which the plans are based on the expected course of technology progress. To accommodate a longer time horizon or to better prepare for the unexpected, we use the signpost approach, which includes a brainstorming technique focused on the deep future, followed by backcasting toward the near future but outside the box of extrapolation of current trends. Concurrent with backcasting, we systematically explore current technology landscapes, using information mining techniques on data sources including patents, publications, and other unstructured information sources. Coordinated interaction between scenario based backcasting and technology landscapes generates candidate potential future signpost events. In this paper we focus on the idea generation, evaluation, and analysis techniques that lead to the identification of signposts.
This paper explores an approach to enterprises as living human social systems. It introduces the problem of widespread failure of reengineering efforts and the application of information technologies to business entities. The heart of the problem is characterized as a gap between business professionals and technologists, which is intrinsic, but needs to be bridged in a way that yields effective technological interventions. Several architectural viewpoints are introduced that describe the nature of enterprise, and that raise interesting questions about possible extensions to systems engineering methods.
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