Yuan Qi’s research while affiliated with University of Turku and other places

The future of businesses is not only orchestrated by emerging trends and megatrends but also to a greater extent struck by surprising events. With the accelerating presence of high-tech innovations and smart technologies, business activities are exposed to an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment. Any unexpected changes in the environment could lead to the malfunction or even collapse of a company, a business, or even an industry. Discerning the seeds of change and anticipating the potential disruptions in the external environment is a precondition for avoiding potential risks and threats. The present study contributes to the conceptual and methodological discussion of disruptive transformation by identifying, analyzing, and interpreting the potential disruptive factors in the external business environment. The venture is undertaken through the lens of probing into the dynamism of China’s e-commerce industry, considering its growing influence both domestically and abroad. Any unexpected disruptions would result in a significant ripple effect on interrelated businesses, industries, and even economies. The research adopts a combined mode of qualitative and quantitative methods in the form of horizon scanning and a Consumer Delphi study. Horizon scanning collects futures signals indicating the seeds of change (i.e., weak signals) and potential disruptions (i.e., wild cards), whereas Delphi study solicits the evaluations on the degree of likelihood and impact of the collected factors from an expert panel. As a result, twenty-seven potential disruptive factors are discovered, categorized, estimated, and discussed.

The freshwaters of the world are facing enormous pressures and demands. Eutrophication is a widespread problem threatening the biodiversity and usability of waters. Unfortunately, the means to alleviate eutrophication are either difficult to realize, inefficient, or effective only on the short-term. In addition, the use of various means is laden with interests, contradictory values and cultural goals, which further complicate the wicked problem of eutrophication and lake management. To scrutinize the problem, a two-round, international Delphi study was carried out. This paper uncovers lake experts' views on how eutrophic lakes will and should be managed and restored in the future up to 2030. Through cluster analysis, the variety of the views of the experts was condensed into five coherent future images: Business as Usual, Let'. s Heal the Lakes, No More Nutrient Discharges, Back to Nature, and Dystopia. The Delphi panel evaluated the Business as Usual as the most probable and the Let'. s Heal the Lakes as the most preferred of the future images. In this paper, we discuss the future images, their preconditions and policy requirements. We also discuss the concept of future images as well as methodological characteristics of relatively large Delphi panels.