From the Perspective of Capability: Identifying Six Roles for a Successful Strategic Foresight Process

• Author: Anne Maertins
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jsc.2057
• Published date: 01 May 2016
• Date: 01 May 2016

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Strat. Change 25: 223–237 (2016)

Published online in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2057

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Strategic Change: Briengs in Entrepreneurial Finance

Strategic Change

DOI: 10.1002/jsc.2057

From the Perspective of Capability: Identifying Six

Roles for a Successful Strategic Foresight Process1

Anne Maertins

Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

Six roles for successful strategic foresight are deduced based on the social practice

approach.

One of the most cited statements in strategic management is that the pace of

change will not be as slow in the future as it is today. Hence, the increasing com-

plexity of events, in combination with their dynamics, challenges the reliable

realization of corporations’ strategies. e question is how can companies ensure

that scarce but valuable information indicating the necessity of strategic adaptation

is not only absorbed early enough but also leads to corresponding initiatives

without diluting the corporation’s longer‐term alignment.

One answer provided by scientists is the management concept of strategic

foresight, for which Harry Igor Anso is at least the stepfather (Martinet, 2010).

His notion of weak signals with the overall target of overcoming ignorance focuses

on how to spot and assess informational rudiments and how to take measures on

this basis (Anso, 1975, 1980, 1985). Research evolution in the eld of strategic

foresight had slowed in the 1990s, but within the last decade, researchers have

again started to spotlight the concept in a wider sense. Given that strategic fore-

sight can be understood as a casual capability in everyday routines (Cunha et al.,

2006; Paliokaitė et al., 2014), surprisingly little is known about how these activities

in these routines have to be organized to enlarge the company’s absorption area

as well as to speed up the transmission of incorporated weak signals, including

the reaction. erefore, the rst steps are to understand the strategic foresight

process itself according to this social practice approach, to identify the actors

taking part in this process, and to assess their particular value contributions.

e article is organized as follows: First, a brief review of the history of strategic

foresight concepts is presented to gain insights for further development. To argue

reasonably about the derived capability perspective and to identify practical issues,

I carried out in‐depth interviews with 10 German decision‐makers at the top

1 JEL classication codes: L10, L22, M10, M12. e author wants to thank Prof.

Dr. Armin Töpfer for his support as well as Mr. Steen Silbermann and Mrs. Julia

Maertins for their enduring motivation and critical comments.

Drawing on the historical

discourse of strategic foresight,

the capability perspective can be

discussed as a logical

enhancement.

Understanding of the social

practice approach from the

capability perspective is

strengthened by in‐depth

interviews with 10 German top

managers.

Six roles are identied that must

be activated to contribute to the

successful strategic foresight

process.