Purpose
This paper aims to provide a detailed case study of a corporate foresight for innovation (CFI) project done by the Higher School of Economics’ (HSE) (Moscow, Russia) corporate foresight (CF) unit for a large state-owned Russian service company. It demonstrates how CFI methods lead to recommendations and how these recommendations result in decisions.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing from being part of the project team, review of the project documents and interviews, the case describes a multi-phased CFI project which incorporated several CF methods. Techniques used for the project itself included grand challenges and trend analysis, analysis of best practices through use of benchmarking and horizon scanning, interviews, expert panels, wild card and weak signals analysis, cross impact analysis, SWOT and backcasting. The project used a broad-base of secondary information, expert panels consisting of company experts and HSE CF team personnel, interviews with senior management and an extensive literature review using HSE’s propriety iFORA system.
Findings
In all 17 CFI recommendation and over 100 implementation recommendations were made; 94 per cent of the CFI recommendations were accepted with most implemented at the time this case was written. The case also identifies five enabling factors that collectively both helped the CFI project and led to a high rate of recommendation acceptance and one factor that hindered CFI project success.
Practical implications
The case study provides detailed information and insight that can help others in conducting CF for innovation projects and establishes a link between CF methods and innovation-based recommendations and subsequent decisions.
Originality/value
In-depth case studies that show academe and practitioners how CFI leads to recommendations and is linked to subsequent decisions have been identified as a gap in the literature. This paper therefore seeks to address this need by presenting a detailed CF case for a corporate innovation project.
Digitalisation in machinery-building is expected to enhance productivity and drive the digital transformation of other industries. The extant literature sparsely describes pathways of different sectors in digitalisation, considering the heterogeneous characteristics of firms and sectors. Emerging economies with important state participation represent a particular interest in this area of research. To this end, a multiple case study method was used to describe a set of determinants revealed from the literature on Russian technological development and innovation in manufacturing. Two different patterns were identified. The first one was typical for large leading firms with state participation, which have a global market presence and a substantial level of interoperability, currently turning into a service business model. Private firms that follow the second pattern focus on physical and digital infrastructure upgrading targeted at particular issues to secure connectivity across departments. The state participation does not have a decisive role in digitalisation decisions; however, it affects the participation of companies in national digital initiatives. This study is a preliminary analysis of the determinants associated with corporate digitalisation from the sectoral perspective. Since both national and corporate strategies are ongoing, it seems premature to make generalised conclusions. Instead, the paper provides useful insights for management and policy that refer to digital technology uptake by machinery-building industries.
The complicated nature of organizing tenders requires creating new means and instruments which are designed to improve the choice efficiency and reduce the term of decision making.
This study presents the analysis of one of the major contemporary transformational forces-the Internet of Things (IoT), which signifi cantly infl uences the future development of all spheres of life. The purpose of the research is to identify the potential economic eff ects of IoT implementation in diff erent markets. To achieve this goal, the following tasks are consistently solved in the study: identifi cation and classifi cation of the main IoT applications markets; detection, assessment and analysis of the economic eff ects of the IoT in the selected segments within the proposed classifi cation; formation of future directions of IoT development. Based on the combination of such methodological approaches as technology life cycle and technology adoption life cycle, perspectives of the IoT development are set out. The technology life cycle is viewed through the prism of the methodology of the research company Gartner (the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies), based on establishing a consensus among a wide range of assessments of leading experts in the fi eld of information and communication technologies. Comparison of the two methods and expert assessments allows us to conclude that, according to the methodology of technology adoption life cycle, the Internet of Things is of interest only for a group of "early adopters."
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.