2.1) Creating a shared language for scanning with key concepts and examples Flashcards
Environmental scanning
- “…the activity of acquiring information… about events and relationships in a company’s outside environment, the knowledge of which would assist top management in its task of charting the company’s future course of action.”
- Organizations scan the environment in order to understand external forces of change so that they may develop effective responses which secure or improve their position in the future. To the extent that an organization’s ability to adapt to its outside environment depends on knowing and interpreting the external changes that are taking place, environmental scanning constitutes a primary mode of organizational learning
- Systematic search for the forces of change in the environment: phenomena that we observe in the external environment with the potential to change the future*
- Not - Individual topics, subjects and events*
- Yes - underlying forces/groups of subjects and events*
- It is also common practice to use conceptual frameworks to categorize the environment into different dimensions to facilitate the scanning process – STEEPV, PESTEL, STEBNPDILE
Issue life cycle
mapping a trend’s diffusion into public awareness from its starting point as an emerging issue of change
Terminology ‘Uncertainty’
‘I think that’s very uncertain.’ ‘You’re right. I completely agree!’
-> AGILITY or the need for a lamguage to learn and get involved
Key concepts
- Focal issue
- Time horizon
- Trends
- Weak signals
- Uncertainties, key incertainties and configurations
- Visions / ‘Intents’
- Scenarios
- Structures, systems and heuristics
- Wildcards (+ black elephants, predetermined elements)
- Megatrends
Drivers of change
- Drivers of change = Drivers are any factors or forces not controlled by your organization that can potentially influence a given strategic focus.
- Driving forces = Driving forces are forces of change outside your organization that will shape future dynamics in predictable and unpredictable ways.
- Future will result from interaction between megatrends, weak signals, wild cards and structural uncertainties
Future = interaction of
- Megatrends -> coming from the past and shaping the future
- Weak Signals -> issues at an embryonic stage of development
- Wildcards -> might surprise in a positive or negative way
- Structural uncertainites -> might take us not for one but plurality of possible futures
Trends and Megatrends
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Trends = declaration of the direction of change.
- usually a gradual and long-term change in the drivers that shape the future of an organization, region, nation, sector or society
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Megatrends = long-term processes of transformation with a broad scope and a dramatic impact
- powerful factors which shape future markets
Megatrends
The ‘Unstoppables’
Three characteristics in which megatrends differ from other trends
- Time horizon - can be observed over decades. They can be projected at least 15 years into the future
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Reach - impact comprehensively on all regions -> result in multidimensional transformationsvof all societal subsystems (politics, society or economy).
- precise features vary according to the region
- Intensity of impact - impact powerfully and extensively on all actors (governments, individuals and their consumption patterns, or corporations and their strategies)
Trends
Where to look?
P - what are the political priorities, regulatory issues, forms of legislation that could affect the organization?
E - What major trends in the economy such as oil prices, interest rates, reduction in income or real spending exist?
S - What are major changes in tastes, preferences and behaviours?
T - What significant developments on the technology frontier could impact the organization?
E - What environmental concerns face the business?
L - What are the prevailing legal conditions and how might they affect business dealings?
Examples - new construction technique and concepts, robots in the various stages of construction, nanotechnology in construction
Environmental & Horizon Scanning: Where to look
- Politics/Law
- Environment
- Society and individual
- Economy and business
- Technology and innovation
Organizing tools
- Shaping tomorrow
- Futures platform
- The brain
- ThinkMap
- Gephi
- MindMeister
- Visual thesaurus
Weak Signals
- external or internal warnings that are too incomplete to permit an accurate estimation of their impact, and/or to determine a complete response
- Ambiguous interpretation but concrete event*
- groups of recent (and still scarce) events that:
- point towards directions not covered by identified trends
- point towards an eventual inversion of identified trends
- point towards the possibility of a wild card
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Characteristics
- Anticipatory
- Qualitative
- Ambiguous
- Fragmentary
- Various formats and sources
Wildcards
discontinuities, sudden events with low probability, high impact and a surprising character
What might never happen?
- black swans
- turkey
Black elephants
cross between ‘a black swan’ (an unlikely, unexpected event with enormous ramifications) and the ‘elephant in the room’ (a problem that is visible to everyone, yet no one still wants to address it) even though we know that one day it will have vast, black-swan like consequences
Predetermined elements
- those events that have already occurred (or that almost certainly will occur) but whose consequences have not yet unfolded
- predetermined elements of structure are areas where structure will change, but the change is largely predictable
