But there are alternatives: effective corporate foresight can also be organized without a process model but with certain capabilities and activities. This is shown in one of our case studies at an US-based multinational energy systems manufacturer in Europe (hereby referred to as “Enerco”).
In this case study we explore how corporate foresight can be carried out without dedicated processes and which mechanism are used for the development of needed capabilities.

Three factors are found to be essential for a corporate foresight system based on every employee’s contribution instead of pre-assigned processes:

1. the promotion of individual initiatives by every employee
2. a corporate culture which promotes vertical and horizontal communication and collaboration
3. board-level initiatives, which provide sufficient funding and backing to develop new business fields

Regarding the first point, it is crucial for the company to have the right people: Enerco’s recruitment and personnel development process is based on five Personality Traits that are believed to be supportive for organic growth: external focus, clear thinking, imagination, inclusiveness, and expertise. The employees’ scores on the traits play a major role on who is hired or promoted and guide individual training. As the traits widely match the suggested characteristics of foresighters in literature, Enerco’s personnel policy fosters every employee’s ability to scan the environment. On the one hand, this policy results in promoting systematically capabilities and characteristics which are essential for achieving company’s goals. On the other hand common values are ensured which facilitate internal communication and cooperation.

The creation of the right environment is another important factor: Enerco’s corporate culture is open, unifying and pervasive. Cross-functional and cross-hierarchical communication is expected and common in practice. Moreover, company-wide collaboration is regarded as important and strongly supported by executives and top-management. This culture of trust and openness particularly supports internal information gathering and rapid insight diffusion as essential parts of a functioning corporate foresight system.

The third factor is board-level initiatives. The top management is facilitating promising ideas from employees by increased attention and by allocating dedicated resources. These initiatives complement every employee’s responsibility for corporate foresight and the corporate culture. Every employee knows the relevance of these activities for the company and therefore supports them as a matter of course. These initiatives foster organic growth by innovations and development of new business fields.

All three mechanisms build upon each other. The “Growth Traits” ensure that every employee have the needed capabilities for effective corporate foresight. The corporate culture establishes an environment where individual capabilities are complemented and new ideas are generated by corporate foresight results. Finally the top management provides necessary resources for the development of innovative concepts and new business fields.

For more details read the full article:

• In German: Knab, S. and R. Rohrbeck Strategische Frühaufklärung bei General Electric: Von der Fähigkeit alle Mitarbeiter zu Mobilisieren um Umbrüche im Unternehmensumfeld erfolgreich zu managen)” In: J. Gausemeier, Vorausschau und Technologieplanung, Paderborn: Heinz Nixdorf Institut, 259-272.
• In English: Chapter 5.8: Involving Every Employee to Manage Discontinuous Change”, In: Rohrbeck, R. 2010. Corporate Foresight: Towards a Maturity Model for the Future Orientation of a Firm. Heidelberg and New York: Physica-Verlag, Springer.

And let us also know your views about how future orientation is build by voting on our recent poll.

Let us know if you can contribute additional terms and help our dictionary to grow. Just drop us an e-mail or leave comment.

• scan for discontinuous change and reduce uncertainty
• trigger organizational responses through integration with strategic management, R&D, marketing, corporate development or strategic controlling
• lay the basis to influence others, such as your customers, your suppliers, public opinion or legislation
• enhance the value of your company by providing a future story to your shareholders and stakeholders

Today we want to get your feedback on what you expect from corporate foresight activities. Is Foresight mostly about thinking (as Maree emphasizes) or is it more about shaping the future, influencing others and acting?

Please share also your view on you expect corporate foresight to add value to your company by leaving comments to this post.

After closing the poll you can now see the result in our poll archive.

To increase the ability to make reliable predictions about trajectories of emerging markets it might be a good idea to talk to your neighbours or to people you know who might have a different perspective. Following this logic firms have started to collaborate on joint foresight capabilities. In our research we came across three different ways:

• executive circles where typically the CEO meets with other CEOs to identify and discuss changes in the environment
• joint foresight, where typically firms have a buyers-suppliers relationship or are connected through their scout networks
• multi-organizational foresight circles that combine companies from different industries to discuss emerging change from different perspectives

The first two examples we discuss in our article  “Opening up for competitive advantage – How Deutsche Telekom creates an open innovation ecosystem” (you can access the article as an open pre-print version or as the  final article published in R&D Managment). If you are more the visual type, you can also access a presentation given at the OECD.

The example of multi-organizational foresight projects is discussed in our book and illustrated below, from the perspective of one firm.

We are looking forward to your views on the feasibility and good practices of collaborative foresight projects.

The full reference information are:

Rohrbeck, R. (2010) “Corporate Foresight: Towards a Maturity Model for the Future Orientation of a Firm“, Physica-Verlag, Springer, Heidelberg and New York. (link to the eBook)

Organizational future orientation (OFO) is the ability to identify and interpret changes in the environment and trigger adequate responses to ensure long-term survival and success.

To tackle the questions how companies become future oriented and thus ensure long-term survival and success, scholars have worked on different levels (see figure below). Some have done research on

• foresight methods such as scenario technique, delphi analysis, etc., that allow us to explore the future, identify alternative futures or make predictions and
• others have worked on corporate foresight as a process. These scholars imply that there is a corporate foresight function, possibly also a corporate foresight unit that generates insights into the future and channels these to other corporate functions such as innovation management, strategic management, corporate development, marketing, or controlling.
• When we talk about organizational future orientation we appreciate that this ability can be build upon a corporate foresight unit, that utilizes foresight methods, but we also include the possibility that a firm builds its future orientation upon other means, such as encouraging all employees to look for external change and empowering them to respond to this change with individual initiative, possibly through corporate venturing schemes.