Change 75 (9)( 2008) 1360 1372.31 A w. Müller, Strategic foresight Prozesse strategischer Trend-und Zukunftsforschung in Unternehmen, Universität Zürich, Zürich, Druckerei Zentrum, 2008.32
She is a member of the Global Agenda Council on Strategic foresight of the World Economic Forum. 1207 A. Volkery, T. Ribeiro/Technological forecasting & Social Change 76 (2009) 1198 1207
An important part of his work is also strategic foresight on environment and technology. Notes 1. The two electricity grid operators were at that time Eltra and Elkraft System.
and Conferences was expressed the concern by some attendees that an opportunity was being missed to use the assembly of Strategic foresight experts to gain more insights into the state of Foresight content regarding critical issues and trends,
1. The FTA COMMUNITY is one of the most capable assemblies of Strategic foresight expertise, and would it not be useful to poll this group for Foresight insights?
Bhimji, W. 2009), Guidance on the Use of Strategic foresight Analysis for Policy development in Government, UK Government office for Science, London, available at:
and explores their implications for strategic foresight. How do businesses develop successful continuity and become economically wealthy
http://www. tandfonline. com/loi/ctas20 Strategic foresight: matching environmental uncertainty Riccardo Vecchiato a a Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy Published online:
Riccardo Vecchiato (2012) Strategic foresight: matching environmental uncertainty, Technology analysis & Strategic management, 24:8, 783-796, DOI: 10.1080/09537325.2012.715487 To link to this article:
8 september 2012,783 796 Strategic foresight: matching environmental uncertainty Riccardo Vecchiato*Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy This paper explores how strategic decision-makers select
and find that they entail different requirements for the design and implementation of strategic foresight actions.
strategic foresight; planning; learning; strategic management Introduction The strategic management literature (Hofer and Schendel 1978; Miles and Snow 1978;
today, the term‘strategic foresight'is used widely to designate the activities and processes that assist decision-makers in the task of charting the company's future course of action (Coates, Durance, and Godet 2010;
The main goal of strategic foresight is to select promptly drivers of change in the company's outside environment (environmental scanning:
So far, strategic foresight has uneven success and popularity. On the one hand, scholars have shown that in the last two decades a significant number of leading firms of such diverse sectoor as energy, automotive, telecommunications,
how do managers design their strategic foresight approach in different environments and thus under different conditions of uncertainty?
On the other hand, they started long ago to systematically engage in strategic foresight and thus progressively designed and refined their approaches to handling environmental uncertainty.
Environmental uncertainty and strategic foresight Conceptualisation of environmental uncertainty Early conceptualisations of uncertainty go back to pioneering management scholars such as Knight (1921) and March and Simon (1958),
when managers lack accurate information Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 785 about organisations, activities,
Strategic foresight: practices and techniques The challenge of coping with increasing uncertainty encouraged new analytical approaches to decision-making and long-range planning:
such approaches are grouped commonly under the label‘strategic foresight'(Coates, Durance, and Godet 2010; Vecchiato and Roveda 2010b.
Strategic foresight encompasses two main tasks: the first regards environmental scanning and the detection of new events and drivers of change (Mendonça and Sapio 2009.
However, strategic foresight had uneven success. Rigby (2001) found that only 21.5%of North american executives used scenario planning in 1999, approximately 50%fewer than in 1994.
Extant research streams of environmental uncertainty and strategic foresight are aligned not seamlessly. The following issue in particular remains largely unexplored:
how do managers design their strategic foresight approach in different environments and thus under different conditions of uncertainty?
On the other hand, they all started long ago to systematically engage in strategic foresight: they put a lot of efforts in terms of both human
ICT Mid-1990s Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 787 The unit of analysis was twofold.
we analysed the foresight activities of each firm in relation to uncertainty and drivers of change in its business environment and the use of strategic foresight in decision-making.
Matching strategic foresight with environmental uncertainty: empirical evidence In this section, we illustrate the main findings of our research.
In such a context, BASF's strategic foresight approach to investigating the evolution impact, and response options to macro drivers of change (i e. for coping with state, effect,
Strategic foresight activities at BASF started in the mid-1990s, when the company realised that the chemical industry was going through major structural changes
(and divestment) decisions for Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 789 expanding
At business and operational levels, strategic foresight supports the definition of target features for enhancing products and services,
In such a context, strategic foresight efforts at Philips aimed essentially at detecting new trends in society, technologies,
Foresight and decision-making The main goal of strategic foresight at Philips is to drive the renewal of the organisation by figuring out how to exploit the new market opportunities enabled by emerging technologies or in response to changing customer needs.
it is allocated to the‘Siemens Technology Accelerator'(part of the Corporate Technology Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 791 division),
A model for uncertainty and strategic foresight In the prior sections, we sketched the strategic foresight approaches that emerged from our data through
our findings offer the broad outline of a conceptual framework regarding how decision-makers match strategic foresight with environmental uncertainty.
Discontinuous and continuous drivers of change entail very different and peculiar implications for strategic foresight and the tools and practices to be used for handling uncertainty.
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 793 On the other hand as they were facing discontinuous drivers of change,
Second, we provide empirical evidence on the ways major companies designed their strategic foresight approaches to handling uncertainty and supporting long-range planning (Cassingena Harper et al. 2008;
Downloaded by University of Bucharest at 05:03 03 december 2014 Strategic foresight 795 Notes on contributor Riccardo Vecchiato is Assistant professor at the Department of Management, Economics and Industrial Engineering of Politecnico di Milano
In Handbook of research on strategic foresight, ed. R. Bradley Mackay and L a. Costanzo, 1 12.
Strategic foresight. Special issue, Technological forecasting and Social Change 77, no. 9: 1423 5. Cuhls, K, . and R. Johnston. 2008.
Strategic foresight in corporate organizations: Assessing the effect and response uncertainty of technology and social drivers of change.
Mietzner, D. and Reger, G. 2005),‘Advantages and disadvantages of scenario approaches for strategic foresight'',International Journal of Technology intelligence and Planning, Vol. 1 No. 2, pp. 220-39.
Design/methodology/approach Delphi topics related to sustainable energy were collected from strategic foresight reports of Japan South korea and China,
Findings By this standard mapping taxonomy and structured analysis, future technology themes in strategic foresight reports from countries in focus are mapped systematically
and associating the future technology themes described in strategic foresight reports from selected countries with a state of the-art-the art technology classification system.
The Link Between Future and Strategy, Palgrave Macmillan, New york, 2003.21 M. E. Porter, Competitive advantage, Free Press, New york, 1985.22 G. Ringland, The role of scenarios in strategic foresight, Technol.
) He is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Strategic foresight. His academic mission is to understand how futures are created
Guidelines for Strategic foresight, Social Technologies, LLC, Washington, 2006.2 K. van der Heijden, Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation, Wiley, Chichester, 2005.3 H. Kahn, A. Wiener, The Year 2000, Macmillan, New york, 1967.4 P. Schwartz, The Art of the Long View, Wiley
form an important core capability that impacts on the ability of organisations to undertake strategic foresight.
insights from the fostering of innovation ideas, Technological forecasting and Social Change 74 (2007) 608 626.16 L a. Costanzo, Strategic foresight in a high-speed environment, Futures 36 (2004
1 The FTA acronym refers to strategic foresight, forecasting and technology assessment. doi: 10.1016/j. techfore. 2008.03.001 The six articles included in this Special issue were presented in 2006.
which must then be embedded in the proposed system to enable an effective connection between strategy and implementation across the value chain. 4. Roles of fta FTA and its elements of strategic foresight,
combining external and internal scenarios to create strategic foresight, Management Decision 43 (2005) 360 381.69 M. J. Epstein,
) 1051 1067.38 H. Chesbrough, The era of open innovation, Sloan Management Review 44 (2003) 35 41.39 T. Heger, R. Rohrbeck, Strategic foresight for collaborative exploration
chauke@cgee. org. br This paper addresses the challenges of communicating the results of a strategic foresight exercise
Vecchiato and Roveda (2010) prefer to use the term‘strategic foresight'rather than the simpler‘foresight
Strategic foresight is defined by Slaughter (1999) as the ability to create and maintain a high-quality, coherent and functional forward view
Strategic foresight exercises can be developed by means of different approaches, dealing with aspects that might include the following:
journals. permissions@oup. com experience dealing with complex strategic foresight exercises, developed by the Center for Strategic Studies and Management (CGEE), Brazil.
strategic foresight exercises (future studies; strategic evaluation of large programs and projects; information and knowledge diffusion. It is considdere to be an interface organization in the ST&I environmment having responsibility for articulating the views of the government, private sector and academia,
From 2001 to the present, the CGEE has conducted nearly 400 strategic foresight exerciise and strategic evaluation studies, mobilizing more than 2000 experts per annum from an average of 300 institutions.
and foresight practitioners should pay heed to their generation as strategic foresight exercises develop. The process of sharing experiences, collective learning and understanding, creation of shared commitmeen to the main decisions to be made
Out-of-the-box thinking is importaan in a strategic foresight exercise. It is important for everyone participating in a given foresight exercise to not be afraid to attempt new ways of thinking (Kelley and Littman, 2001.
As mentioned before, the wisdom of conducting given strategic foresight exercises, irrespective of its complexity, lies in the ability to develop tailor-made methodologies,
This paper will focus on strategic foresight, taking advantaag of CGEE's background in conducting strategic foresiigh exercises and strategic evaluation studies during the past decade, all of
Beside the fact that the strategic foresight methodologgica approach adopted in this paper will be presented later it is relevant to anticipate certain aspects more related to intangibles.
For the sake of clarifying how distinctive a strategic foresight exercise might be, demands may be associated with innovation, competitiveness, long-term government planning, subsidies to S&t public policies,
In the last three years, CGEE has conducted some relevant national strategic foresight exercises, all involving ST&I policy,
11 strategic foresight exercises to enhance the competitiveenes of the Brazilian industrial sector in the global economy:
shoes, furniture, automotive, cosmetics, marine, industrial automation, civil construction, medical equipment, plastics, furniture and aeronautics..Strategic foresight for FINEP (the case study of this paper) and the Sa o
Strategic foresight exercise for the sustainable food production process in Brazil..Strategic foresight for the National Council for Scientific and Technological development (CNPQ.
3. The value of out-of-the-box thinking in a foresight exercise The concept of out-of-the-box thinking adopted in this paper is related to learning organization theory (Tosey 2005.
and other stakeholders. 4. Strategic foresight methodological approach This section will explore the main aspects of the strategic foresight methodological approach.
Figure 1. Strategic foresight methodological approach. Challenges in communicating the outcomes of foresight studies. 249 The foresight exercise itself comprises three distinct phases:
This activity was part of the methodology preparation of the strategic foresight exercise. The main ideas and designed strategy on how to implement out-of-the-box thinking at FINEP are shown in Fig. 3. A vision of a possible, successful future for FINEP,
Thus, the use of the conceptual and methodological approach of strategic foresight to set strategic priorities and action plans
Strategic foresight proved to be a powerful instrumeen for long-term planning, combining the conceept of strategy and foresight, relying on a diversity of methods and techniques and,
The main challenge is to introduce long-term perception and analysis to foster strategic foresight of interest to the state more than a given government structure.
Competitive intelligence approaches produce better engagement than strategic foresight. Private sector stakeholders tend to become very active
representatives from universities and research institutions tend to impose barriers to accepptin strategic foresight activities. Time is usually not a problem
2011)‘ Strategic foresight applied to the management plan of an innovation development agency',Technology analysis & Strategic management, 24: 267 83.
Habegger, B. 2010)‘ Strategic foresight in public policy: reviewiin the experiences of the UK, Singapore and The netherlands',Futures, 42:49 58.
of strategic foresight, forecasting and technology assessment. These are oriented future processes that offer policy -and decision-makers the potential to look across (disruptive) transformations
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