Special Issue on "Corporate Foresight and Innovation Management"

Journal |Technology Analysis & Strategic Management | Corporate Foresight and Innovation Management | Submission deadline: September 2016

Background

Many organizations now support and conduct corporate foresight exercises. Developed and advertised by consultants as a strategic process of handling the effect and response uncertainty of technology and social drivers of change (Rohrbeck and Gemünden, 2011; Vecchiato and Roveda, 2010), organizations are frequently called upon to integrate these exercises into their organisational processes. While it is widely acknowledged that the link between cause and effect is often elusive, the foresight literature has striven to establish a positive relationship between corporate foresight and innovation (Anderson et al., 2004; Gracht, et al., 2010; Rameriz, et al. 2011). Those that do not directly report this causal link often identify flexible organizational outcomes such as ambidexterity, adaptive learning, and visioning whose derived theoretical and managerial implications could promote new product development and technology foresight in fast-velocity environments (Canongia, 2004; Major and Cordy-Hayes, 2000; Ruff, 2014).

Recurrent theme of recent theory has therefore increasingly focused on how these episodic exercises’ could be leveraged to better predict the potential of emerging technologies and existing technological trajectories (Battistella and De Toni, 2011; Vishnevskiy et al., 2014; Webster, 1999). However, this emerging paradigm has come to represent something of a conundrum. On one hand, scholars explicitly or tacitly agree with the validity of these ‘factual’ claims. Yet, as observed by Rohrbeck and Gemünden (2011), those who have attempted to examine this causal link frequently struggle to show exactly when and how corporate foresight exercises could lead to innovation. Moreover, the appropriateness of corporate foresight exercises in stimulating radical and disruptive innovations are often sidestepped due to the theoretical and methodological complexities involved in mapping the tasks, connections, architectures, and contribution of corporate foresight to the innovation process (Georghiouand Cassingena Harper, 2011; van der Duin and den Hartigh , 2009)

Purpose and themes

The purpose of this special issue, therefore, is to examine the limits and potentialities for corporate foresight exercises as an imperative to innovation, and their relevance, interactive effects, and contribution to innovation management. Empirical, qualitative, and quantitative contributions are invited.

Possible topics for essays and papers include but are not limited to:

Organizational and institutional antecedents that enable (or impede) the creative emergence of innovation from corporate foresight exercises
Processes through which organizations develop strategic foresight to sustain innovation in stable and high-velocity environments
How corporate foresight exercises can be leveraged to determine technology futures
How corporate foresight exercises can be integrated into organizational processes such as strategy to stimulate innovation
How to implement the outcomes of innovation foresight exercises
How to combine new product and service development methods with strategic foresight exercises
Contribution of corporate foresight in mobilizing differential visions for new product development
Role of corporate foresight in mobilizing anticipatory intelligence for deciding on competing and alternative technological pathways
Extent to which corporate foresight exercises can contribute to analyzing disruptive innovations
How to measure the return-on-foresight in an organization and how to develop foresight capabilities in sustainable ways.

Join the symposium

In order to increase the quality and quantity of the potential papers to be submitted to this special issue, a special symposium on ‘Corporate foresight and innovation management’ will be held at the 2016 Annual conference of the British Academy of Management (BAM) in August 2016 at Newcastle University, UK. The symposium will act as a feeder for the special issue and a forum where authors would receive feedback on their work before they submit their papers to the special issue. Papers submitted to the symposium in consistence with the internal rules of BAM will go through a double-blind review. Contributions accepted by the reviewers will then be invited to present their work at the symposium. Based on the initial reviews as well as the presentations, authors of the best ten contributions would be encouraged to revise, extend and submit to the special issue.

Manuscript preparation and submission

Manuscripts should comply with the scope, standards, formats and editorial policy of Technology Analysis & Strategic Management. All papers will be reviewed through a double-blind peer review process. In preparation of manuscripts, authors are asked to follow the author guidelines closely. A guide for authors, sample articles and relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Technology Analysis & Strategic Management Instructions for Authors.

Anticipated Deadlines:

Announcement of BAM symposium: February 2016
Notification of BAM reviews reports: March 2016
SI Submission deadline: September 2016
Notification of review reports: November 2016
Revised final manuscripts due date: March 2017
Final Manuscript submission to Publisher: June 2017

References

Anderson, P.D., Jorgensen, B,H. Lading, L. and Rasmussen, B. (2004) Sensor foresight-Technology and market, Technovation, 24, 4, 311-320.

Battistella, C. and De Toni, A.F (2011) A methodology of technological foresight: A proposal and field study, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 78, 1029-1048.

Canongia, C., Antunes, A., Pereira, F., (2004) Technological foresight—The use of biotechnology in the development of new drugs against breast cancer, Technovation, 24, 4, 299-309.

Major, E.J and Cordy-Hayes, M. (2000) Engaging the business support to give SMEs the benefit of foresight, Technovation, 20, 11, 589-602.

Georghiou, L., and Cassingena Harper, J. (2011) From priority-setting to articulation of demand: Foresight for research and innovation policy and strategy. Futures, 43, 3, 243-251.

Konstantin, V., Karasev, O., and Meissner, D. (2014) integrated roadmaps and corporate foresight as tools of innovation management: The case of Russian companies, Technovation, In Press.

Ramírez, R., Roodhart, L. and Manders, W. (2011) How Shell’s domains link innovation and strategy. Long Range Planning, 44, 4, 250-270.

Ruff, F. (2014) The advanced role of corporate foresight in innovation and strategic management—Reflections on practical experiences from the automotive industry, Technological Forecasting and Social Change. In Press, Corrected Proof, doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2014.07.013

Rohrbeck, R. and Gemünden, H. G. (2011) Corporate foresight: Its three roles in enhancing the innovation capacity of a firm, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 78, 2, 231–243.

van der Duin, P.A., and den Hartigh, E. (2009) Keeping the balance: exploring the link of futures research with innovation and strategy processes. Technology Analysis & Strategic Management, 21(3), 333-351.

Vecchiato, R. and Roveda, C. (2010) Strategic foresight in corporate organizations: Handling the effect and response uncertainty of technology and social drivers, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 77, 1527-1539.

Von der Gracht, H. A., Vennemann, C. R. and Darkow, I. (2010) Corporate foresight and innovation management: A portfolio-approach in evaluating organisational development, Futures, 42, 4, 380-339.

Webster, A. (1999) Technologies in transition, policies in transition: Foresight in the risk society, Technovation, 19, 6, 413-421.