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Strategic Foresight in Multinational Enterprises - A Case Study on the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories
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Strategic Foresight activities enable companies to use weak signals to identify opportunities and threats. Research on Strategic Foresight proposes different methods, discusses their implementation and gives recommendations on how to link Strategic Foresight with other functions in an organization. Based on a literature review, we define a generic framework for the management of Strategic Foresight activities on the strategic, tactical and operational level and identify and discuss actors, methods and systems of Strategic Foresight. Building on an in-depth case study of the Deutsche Telekom Laboratories we shed light on the implementation of Strategic Foresight activities. In the discussion we focus on the interaction of methods from Consumer Foresight and Technology Intelligence. Taking an example project, we explore how Strategic Foresight is used on the operational level of innovation management. We conclude that Strategic Foresight can successfully contribute to coping with uncertainty and complexity and can feed the front-end of innovation from the market (customer needs) and technology (realization opportunities) perspective.
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... 2.5. Systematyzacja badań studiów nad przyszłościąŹródło:(Rohrbeck, Arnold, Heuer 2007).Z przydomkiem np. narodowy -foresight może służyć do sprecyzowania m.in. ...
Kapitał ludzki w strukturach sieciowo-wirtualnych
Kapitał intelektualny i kapitał ludzki w ewoluującej przestrzeni organizacyjnej (w optyce badawczej knowledge management)
The complication of the business environment, the growth of uncertainty, and the dynamics of change significantly affect strategic planning in business. Foresight research used in a company serves as a link between the volatility of the surrounding environment, possible expansion prospects, and an enterprise’s strategy and tactics. Based on data from Poland, this article examines the main factors that determine the readiness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to navigate a variety of paths into the future (foresight maturity). This study uses an integrated approach, that integrates concepts of foresight maturity, dynamic capabilities, and corporate foresight. It relies upon a sample of over 500 Polish manufacturing SMEs, which is representative in terms of size, type, sector, and geography of activities. Using a 28-criteria assessment tool, it was found that the level of foresight maturity of a company most often depends on the size, type, and geographical coverage of markets. Involving stakeholders in the development of corporate strategies, scanning the micro- and macro-environment of the enterprise using a variety of information sources, improving skills in working with foresight tools as well as fostering other dynamic capabilities allow companies to gain lasting competitive advantages in a changing and unpredictable business landscape.
Verantwortung in Unternehmen zu übernehmen bedeutet, jeden Tag Unsicherheiten zu akzeptieren und damit umzugehen. Aus diesem Grund bemühen sich Wissenschaft und Praxis um Theorien, Methodologien und Methoden, um dieses Bedürfnis zu unterstützen. Das mittlerweile sehr ausdifferenzierte Feld der Futures Studies ist geprägt von epistemologischen Grundannahmen, die in die theoretischen Positionen hineinragen. Bezüglich der theoretischen Positionen und den methodologischen Rahmen ist danach zu fragen, worauf diese ausgerichtet sind. Geht es nur um Darstellungen oder um bestimmte Vorstellungen, die erreicht werden sollen? Auch die Wahl der Methode, hier konkret die Szenario-Technik, wird davon beeinflusst. Der Rahmen ist damit klar, aber die konkrete Ausgestaltung muss geklärt werden. Das Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, diese Differenzierung herauszuarbeiten und am Ende mittels zwei Methoden zu erläutern.
Питання корпоративного форсайту набувають значну актуальність в управлінні мультинаціональними компаніями. Мета дослідження спрямована на визначення та систематизацію сучасних наукових поглядів щодо застосування корпоративного форсайту в сфері менеджменту міжнародного бізнесу. До основних результатів дослідження відноситься таксономія цінності застосування корпоративного форсайту за предметними областями дослідження міжнародного бізнесу. Також в статті запропоновано матрицю видів корпоративного форсайту. Вона надає можливість ідентифікувати недостатньо вивчені питання використання корпоративного форсайту в міжнародному бізнесі, до яких, зокрема, належить процес інтернаціоналізації підприємства. В подальшому значної наукової уваги заслуговують питання особливостей корпоративного форсайту в міжнародних компаніях в умовах діджиталізації та четвертої промислової революції.
The evaluation of various innovation fields of an emerging technology as well as their potential impact on a certain market, region, industry, or target group is a part of an innovation manager's day-to-day business. Such evaluations are usually based on a combination of information from a variety of data sources, which are used to decide whether to invest in the advancement or adoption of a technology. With the aim of supporting this decision-making process, we combine different data sources to identify and evaluate innovation fields by semantically bridging trend and patent data. We apply our method in the context of blockchain technology, show how trend data can be used and operationalized to identify innovation fields, and illustrate how patent data can be used to evaluate these innovation fields. Our data reveals that trend and patent data complement each other and that hybrid or multihybrid approaches to evaluate a technology's development lead to additional insights for the systemic anticipation of future perspectives as well as research pathways of innovation fields.
To achieve competitive advantage (CA) in emerging markets (EM) firms aresuggested to increase market orientation, using competitive intelligence (CI) as a source toincrease firm performance. However, in-depth linkage between CA and CI, as well as itsawareness/culture and process/structure constructs, has been researched and understood onlyin a limited way in general and for EM business in particular. This paper gives in-depthclarification of six research questions relating to the connection between CI, its constructs andCA for EM business as well as how CI as a product/process could be adapted for a larger impacton CA. It reports on a qualitative, document and interview data based in-depth single case studyat a CI department of a European Union (EU) commercial vehicle manufacturer engaging inEM business. It finds that overall the linkage of CI for CA was traceable and transparent tousers/generators of CI in the specific case with ambiguously perceived limitations, andinfluenced by seven identified factors. Seven out of eight pre-identified CI constructs werepromoted but also heterogeneously understood as contributing to CA, with no other relevantconstructs identifiable. Adaptions for more impact on CA were recommended for CI as a productin a limited sense, and as a process with eight potential levers more comprehensively. Theseresults help businesses to improve CI, its constructs, its products and process for a betterlinkage to CA and firm performance.
In business or government operations, surprise is rarely a good thing. Although sometimes positive, the effects of unexpected events and developments can take a variety of difficult forms – from being simply inconvenient to disastrous. However, foreseeing the future accurately is a difficult process, especially futures that involve dealing with emerging technologies. Further, unexpected new technology developments can produce significant surprises. The main response to this uncertainty is to establish early warning systems that help anticipate technological surprises. However, many specific internal company early warning efforts set up to anticipate technological surprises are often not effective. Even when successful, early warning alerts can end up not being enough. Not only are responsive actions by managers essential to dealing with potential surprises, but real benefits can occur when a future technology warning is turned into a company advantage through deliberate actions that arise from the warning process. Incorporating the full set of technology intelligence (TI) practices is an important element of creating a business edge by managing and potentially exploiting surprises. This paper provides an overview of technology intelligence (TI) as practiced by many organizations today, from the private, government, and international sectors. The discussion begins with describing TI objectives and process and then presents several elements of how TI operations are conducted, focusing on TI customers, descriptions of TI needs, and how to address them.
For specialists and nonspecialists alike, this perceptive selection of the newest and up and coming tools and techniques of competitive intelligence, offering a well balanced combination of theory and practice. It shows how advances in computers and technology have accelerated progress in CI management, and the ways in which CI has affected (and been affected by) all major business functions and processes. It explores applications to organizations of various sizes and types, in both the public and private sectors. Editors Fleisher and Blenkhorn link leading-edge research in CI to advances in current practice, and balance pragmatic against conceptual concerns. Analysts, strategists and organizational decision makers at higher levels will find the book especially valuable, as they seek to make sense of the business environment and assess their organizations' evolving, dynamic places in it.
The pace of change in today's global, competitive economy is greater than at any time in recorded history. Thus, as never before, companies need better tools for business and competitive analysis. The book surveys applications of CI that are critical to business processes, such as mergers and acquisitions, and to evolving industries, such as biotechnology. They focus on how push and pull Internet technologies affect data gathering and analysis and how CI can be managerially assessed using multiple evaluative approaches, unavailable until now in the public domain. They then turn to the future, and lay out some startling yet plausible viewpoints on what the next frontiers of competitive intelligence will be and how organizations can and must ready themselves for them.
What is strategic foresight? Strategic foresight (SF) is the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view and to use the insights arising in organisationally useful ways; for example: to detect adverse conditions, guide policy, shape strategy; to explore new markets, products and services. It represents a fusion of futures methods with those of strategic management. Most organisations operate primarily on the basis of priorities and principles laid down in the past, within a taken-for-granted worldview. They modify their underlying past-orientation with inputs from the current environment such as market information, economic signals and government regulations. But few attempt to bring these factors from the past and present into a coherent relationship with the forward view. Since the latter remains a collective blind spot this article concentrates on the construction, maintenance and uses of the forward view.
The technology roadmapping technique is used widely in industry to support strategic technology planning. Roadmaps can take various forms, but the most flexible and generic type comprises a multi-layered time-based chart that links technology and product developments to market needs. In recent years, the approach has been used in sector-level foresight programmes, particularly in North America. This paper provides a brief overview of the technology roadmapping approach, and describes the use of a process (''T-Plan'') for supporting the rapid initiation of the technique in organisations. The application of the method is illustrated by means of an automotive sector-level case study (the UK Foresight Vehicle technology roadmapping initiative), which highlights issues associated with customisation of the roadmapping approach, and the related communication and network development benefits.
Technology roadmapping in the outlined form is an effective tool for the conversion of a functional-overlapping and interdisciplinary innovation management. It generally helps the involved persons in a substantial way by identifying consensus and common adjustment. Technology-roadmapping can be used in different ways and at different situations. The spectrum ranges from one person a day, i.e. if a director of an R&D unit applies the technology-roadmapping to the domain of his unit, up to several persons over months, i.e. if several companies of an industry want to agree on a common technology-roadmap for technology-political reasons. In the form suggested here, technology-roadmapping is based on the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. From this, in first instance, the evolutionary patterns of technical systems get applied. Whether working with or without evolutionary patterns, the outlined process in this essay arranges the subtasks of technology-roadmapping into five steps, which ensure systematic complete and comprehensible results.
Technology foresight is an important activity in companies to meet the challenges of a fast changing environment. The understanding and the concepts of technology foresight have changed during the last decades. Three generations of technology foresight are developed in this paper. In the third generation, technology foresight is an integrated part of strategic management, process-oriented, need- and value-driven and network-dominated. Although this model represents practices in companies, not all elements are included in one firm. This paper is based on interviews in large multinational corporations and a review of the literature.
Information about competitors can hold great promise for improving innovation management. In this paper technological information about competitors is set into a framework of information systems on external data. It is then argued that while information collection and information use are decentralized the analysis of the information collected should be centralized. If intelligence on competitors is institutionalized, it serves to increase warning times before the introduction of innovations by competitors. This article studies the practice of analyzing competitors' technology by German companies.
Many forms of analyzing future technology and its consequences coexist, for example, technology intelligence, forecasting, roadmapping, assessment, and foresight. All of these techniques fit into a field we call technology futures analysis (TFA). These methods have matured rather separately, with little interchange and sharing of information on methods and processes. There is a range of experience in the use of all of these, but changes in the technologies in which these methods are used—from industrial to information and molecular—make it necessary to reconsider the TFA methods. New methods need to be explored to take advantage of information resources and new approaches to complex systems. Examination of the processes sheds light on ways to improve the usefulness of TFA to a variety of potential users, from corporate managers to national policy makers. Sharing perspectives among the several TFA forms and introducing new approaches from other fields should advance TFA methods and processes to better inform technology management as well as science and research policy.