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Corporate Foresight
Corporate foresight has been conceptualised by strategic foresight practitioners and academics working and/or studying corporations as a set of practices, a set of capabilities and an ability of a firm. It enables firms to detect discontinuous change early, interpret its consequences for the firm, and inform future courses of action to ensure the long-term survival and success of the company.Rohrbeck, Rene (2010) ''Corporate Foresight: Towards a Maturity Model for the Future Orientation of a Firm'', Springer Series: Contributions to Management Science, Heidelberg and New York, Motivation * The ''high mortality'' of companies that are faced by external change. For example, a study by Arie de Geus of Royal Dutch Shell came to the result that the life expectancy of a Fortune 500 company is below 50 years, because most companies are unable to adapt their organization to changes in their environment. * The continuous ''need'' for companies ''to explore and develop new business fields'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strategic Foresight
Strategic foresight is a planning-oriented discipline related to futures studies. In a business context, a more action-oriented approach has become well known as corporate foresight.Rohrbeck, Rene (2010) ''Corporate Foresight: Towards a Maturity Model for the Future Orientation of a Firm'', Heidelberg: Physica-Verlag, Springer, Definition and idea Strategy is a high level plan to achieve one or more goals under conditions of uncertainty. Strategic foresight happens when any planner uses scanned inputs, forecasts, alternative futures exploration, analysis and feedback to produce or alter plans and actions of the organization. Scenario planning plays a prominent role in strategic foresight. The flowchart to the right provides a process for classifying a phenomenon as a scenario in the intuitive logics tradition and differentiates it from many other techniques and approaches to planning. Strategic planning always includes analysis, but it may or may not involve serious foresight on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Corporate Culture
Historically there have been differences among investigators regarding the definition of organizational culture. Edgar Schein, a leading researcher in this field, defined "organizational culture" as comprising a number of features, including a shared "pattern of basic assumptions" which group members have acquired over time as they learn to successfully cope with internal and external organizationally relevant problems. Elliott Jaques first introduced the concept of culture in the organizational context in his 1951 book ''The Changing Culture of a Factory''. The book was a published report of "a case study of developments in the social life of one industrial community between April, 1948 and November 1950". The "case" involved a publicly-held British company engaged principally in the manufacture, sale, and servicing of metal bearings. The study concerned itself with the description, analysis, and development of corporate group behaviours. Ravasi and Schultz (2006) characterise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Organizational Learning
Organizational learning is the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organization. An organization improves over time as it gains experience. From this experience, it is able to create knowledge. This knowledge is broad, covering any topic that could better an organization. Examples may include ways to increase production efficiency or to develop beneficial investor relations. Knowledge is created at four different units: individual, group, organizational, and inter organizational. The most common way to measure organizational learning is a learning curve. Learning curves are a relationship showing how as an organization produces more of a product or service, it increases its productivity, efficiency, reliability and/or quality of production with diminishing returns. Learning curves vary due to organizational learning rates. Organizational learning rates are affected by individual proficiency, improvements in an organization's technology, and improveme ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Strategic Resource
In economics, factors of production, resources, or inputs are what is used in the production process to produce output—that is, goods and services. The utilized amounts of the various inputs determine the quantity of output according to the relationship called the production function. There are four ''basic'' resources or factors of production: land, labour, capital and entrepreneur (or enterprise). The factors are also frequently labeled "producer goods or services" to distinguish them from the goods or services purchased by consumers, which are frequently labeled "consumer goods". There are two types of factors: ''primary'' and ''secondary''. The previously mentioned primary factors are land, labour and capital. Materials and energy are considered secondary factors in classical economics because they are obtained from land, labour, and capital. The primary factors facilitate production but neither becomes part of the product (as with raw materials) nor becomes significantly tran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Path Dependence
Path dependence is a concept in economics and the social sciences, referring to processes where past events or decisions constrain later events or decisions. It can be used to refer to outcomes at a single point in time or to long-run equilibria of a process. Path dependence has been used to describe institutions, technical standards, patterns of economic or social development, organizational behavior, and more. In common usage, the phrase can imply two types of claims. The first is the broad concept that "history matters", often articulated to challenge explanations that pay insufficient attention to historical factors. This claim can be formulated simply as "the future development of an economic system is affected by the path it has traced out in the past" or "particular events in the past can have crucial effects in the future." The second is a more specific claim about how past events or decisions affect future events or decisions in significant or disproportionate ways, throu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mental Model
A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person's intuitive perception about their own acts and their consequences. Mental models can help shape behaviour and set an approach to solving problems (similar to a personal algorithm) and doing tasks. A mental model is a kind of internal symbol or representation of external reality, hypothesized to play a major role in cognition, reasoning and decision-making. Kenneth Craik suggested in 1943 that the mind constructs "small-scale models" of reality that it uses to anticipate events. Jay Wright Forrester defined general mental models as: The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world, government or country. He has only selected concepts, and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Technology Scouting
Technology scouting is an element of technology management in which :(1) emerging technologies are identified, :(2) technology related information is channeled into an organization, and :(3) supports the acquisition of technologies. It is a starting point of a long term and interactive matching process between external technologies and internal requirements of an existing organization for strategic purposes. This matching may also be aided by technology roadmapping. Technology scouting is also known to be part of competitive intelligence, which firms apply as a tool of competitive strategy. It can also be regarded as a method of technology forecasting or in the broader context also an element of corporate foresight.Rohrbeck, Rene (2010) ''Corporate Foresight: Towards a Maturity Model for the Future Orientation of a Firm'', Physica-Verlag, Heidelberg and New York, Technology scouting may also be applied as an element of an open innovation approach. Technology scouting is seen as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Innovation Management
Innovation management is a combination of the management of innovation processes, and change management. It refers to product, business process, marketing and organizational innovation. Innovation management is the subject of ISO 56000 (formerly 50500) series standards being developed by ISO TC 279. Innovation management includes a set of tools that allow managers plus workers or users to cooperate with a common understanding of processes and goals. Innovation management allows the organization to respond to external or internal opportunities, and use its creativity to introduce new ideas, processes or products. It is not relegated to R&D; it involves workers or users at every level in contributing creatively to an organization's product or service development and marketing. By utilizing innovation management tools, management can trigger and deploy the creative capabilities of the work force for the continuous development of an organization. Common tools include brainstorming, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Digitization
DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a Digital data, digital (i.e. computer-readable) format.Collins Dictionary. (n.d.). Definition of 'digitize'. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/digitize The result is the representation of an object, image, sound, document, or Signal (electrical engineering), signal (usually an analog signal) obtained by generating a series of numbers that describe a discrete set of points or Sample (signal), samples. The result is called ''Digital data, digital Group representation, representation'' or, more specifically, a ''digital image'', for the object, and ''digital form'', for the signal. In modern practice, the digitized data is in the form of Binary number, binary numbers, which facilitates processing by Digital computer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Competitive Advantage
In business, a competitive advantage is an attribute that allows an organization to outperform its competitors. A competitive advantage may include access to natural resources, such as high-grade ores or a low-cost power source, highly skilled labor, geographic location, high entry barriers, and access to new technology and to proprietary information. Overview The term ''competitive advantage'' refers to the ability gained through attributes and resources to perform at a higher level than others in the same industry or market (Christensen and Fahey 1984, Kay 1994, Porter 1980 cited by Chacarbaghi and Lynch 1999, p. 45). The study of this advantage has attracted profound research interest due to contemporary issues regarding superior performance levels of firms in today's competitive market. "A firm is said to have a competitive advantage when it is implementing a value creating strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential player" (Barney 1991 cited b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prototyping
A prototype is an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. It is a term used in a variety of contexts, including semantics, design, electronics, and software programming. A prototype is generally used to evaluate a new design to enhance precision by system analysts and users. Prototyping serves to provide specifications for a real, working system rather than a theoretical one. In some design workflow models, creating a prototype (a process sometimes called materialization) is the step between the formalization and the evaluation of an idea. A prototype can also mean a typical example of something such as in the use of the derivation 'prototypical'. This is a useful term in identifying objects, behaviours and concepts which are considered the accepted norm and is analogous with terms such as stereotypes and archetypes. The word ''prototype'' derives from the Greek , "primitive form", neutral of , "original, primitive", from πρῶτο ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Backcasting
Backcasting is a planning method that starts with defining a desirable future and then works backwards to identify policies and programs that will connect that specified future to the present. The fundamentals of the method were outlined by John B. Robinson from the University of Waterloo in 1990.Robinson, John B. 1990. Futures under glass: a recipe for people who hate to predict ''Futures'', vol. 22, issue 8, pp. 820–842. The fundamental question of backcasting asks: "if we want to attain a certain goal, what actions must be taken to get there?" While forecasting involves predicting the future based on current trend analysis, backcasting approaches the challenge of discussing the future from the opposite direction; it is "a method in which the future desired conditions are envisioned and steps are then defined to attain those conditions, rather than taking steps that are merely a continuation of present methods extrapolated into the future". In statistics and data analysis, back ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
