What corporations do with foresight

Abstract

Foresight involves future-oriented awareness and planning, enabling businesses to respond quickly and effectively to future market threats and opportunities. However, knowledge about corporate foresight practices and outcomes is limited. Corporations interested in implementing foresight are unable to identify best practices or anticipate results from foresight activities. Therefore, this qualitative, multiple holistic case study was a foundational investigation of foresight phenomenon within contemporary American corporations. A convenience sample of 14 foresight practitioners represented American corporations or American divisions of European corporations actively using foresight. Interview queries aligned with the guiding research questions explored corporate foresight methods and outcomes. Interview data were coded and synthesized for thematic report of common and unique responses; this documented practices used in and outcomes derived from corporate foresight. Foresight practitioners revealed specific actions taken by corporations in response to foresight outcomes. Actions included organizational changes, introduction of new products or product variations, new research and development projects, and inclusion of foresight project outputs such as reports, presentations, recommendations, in departmental plans. The findings suggested standardization of terminology for professional discourse, education, and practice, would benefit practitioners and corporations. Four tenets emerging from the themes were short-termism, corporate culture, implementation, and feedback loop; these tenets should guide future use of foresight in the context of for-profit corporations.

Devising Research Inquiries: An Interdisciplinary-Strategic Approach

“…The approach of questioning utilizing a strategic management Internal/External analyses (David, 2013) may help frame inquiries to solicit for data from various vantage points. According to Hammoud & Nash, (2014) internal/external data is critical in market conditions that are 'static.' The intend of this article is to articulate a strategic approach to devising research inquiries drawing from Fred R. David's (2013).…”

The Difficulty of Climate Change Adaptation in Manufacturing Firms: Developing an Action-Theoretical Perspective on the Causality of Adaptive Inaction

“…This may concern adaptations of the built infrastructure of the firm or such changes of the product portfolio, which require long innovation lead time, which is the time needed for research, development, distribution and product launch [42]. However, employing long-term investment horizons may often lack expectations of satisfying returns, particularly if high discount rates are assumed.…”

“…In particular, short innovation lead time may question the utility of long-term strategic planning as flexible responses to changing demands are facilitated. In fact, only 10% of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) have innovation lead times of more than 3 years and 28% have respective lead times of less than a year according to a survey among German SMEs [45], notwithstanding sectoral differences [42,46].…”

“…This may include management customs, such as the focus of entrepreneurial crisis management on instant reactions to immediate crisis situations [2]. Similarly, routines of planners to extrapolate past data in forecasting models [42] may hardly provide the insights required for long-term adaptations to climate change as the latter is dynamic in nature [49].…”

Formal and informal scenario-planning in strategic decision-making: an assessment of corporate reasoning

“…By developing scenarios, executives are able to consider diverse viewpoints and forecasts of the future, and discover disparate priorities (Ringland, 2010). Many believe that strategic foresight deepens leaders' understanding of complex systems and develops strategic agility by preparing them for future threats and opportunities (Hammoud and Nash, 2014;Vecchiato and Roveda, 2010).…”