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This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

In the current business world, things seldom remain the same for long. Globalization and relentless technological development ensure that change is both inevitable and ongoing. As a result, the only real predictable aspect of the future is its unpredictability. The uncertainty inherent in drastic change is the source of both risk and opportunity alike. How to minimize the former and fully exploit the latter is a burning issue facing organizations today. Finding ways to effectively manage uncertainty is therefore likely to be high on the agenda for most leaders. Those with the capacity to engage in strategic foresight are arguably best positioned to meet the challenges facing them.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

The purpose of this research is to explore the nature of change and the practices of foresight required to anticipate and to plan for change.

Part I provides a sketch of investigations of change and related areas of uncertainty and discontinuity. Part II provides a conceptual framework outlining four types of change: incremental, contextual, structural and foundational. Part III outlines the methodological distinctions required to explore the four types of change characterized here as normal and extraordinary foresight. Part IV combines these examinations to develop a structured approach to scenario analysis. Finally, Part V examines the implications of this work.

A structured approach to scenario planning explores four variations of evolutionary and revolutionary changes. It applies both normal and extraordinary foresight to explore the epistemological and ontological boundaries of change and to analyze the impact of shifts in ontological boundaries. While a structured approach applies established tools and techniques, it also directs our attention to areas where we can do more. It is an integral part of strategic foresight in a changing world.

This is a conceptual article based on over 25 years of practice in corporate strategy, including 10 years of work in scenario planning. It is also drawn from doctoral research on the epistemological and ontological boundaries of paradigms (Wayland, 2003), as outlined in Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn and Hacking, 2012).

Recent work examining the epistemological and ontological boundaries of change are linked with a practical framework and methodological distinction. These contributions are combined with a structured approach to scenario planning to improve the ability to anticipate and to plan for change.

Over the past seven years within a small, liberal arts (LA) Canadian university, significant paradigm shifts in students’ programmatic choices have occurred reflecting student preference for business-related programs versus traditional LA offerings. Grounded in strategic foresight (SF) practices, this paper aims to investigate drivers of declining traditional LA enrolment that are currently a boon for management studies, positing implications for long-term futures of the LA Academy.

This paper lays out foundational research exploring phenomena in the academy, including disruptive forces, and explores how SF can clarify and shape long-term choices. Seeking to answer what paradigm-shifting forces really mean for the future of the academy, a case study approach is used to interpret disruptions to a Canadian institution facing present challenges and an uncertain future. Scenarios are developed for the broader academy using an environmental understanding to better inform predictive actions envisioned in academic institutional future planning.

The outcome of this research, including four scenarios, will be used to better understand student and stakeholder motivations informing future academic planning. As institutional paradigms appear resistant to change, these foresight-inspired findings are valuable considerations for institutional administrators, particularly those at stressed organizations facing unsettling realities.

The case study identifies that for the LA Academy, myriad future unknowns exist, including its continued existence in today’s form. Institutions are generally unresponsive to the precursors of future change and are not systematically exploring future options.

This paper aims to present a categorization scheme and use it to classify Canadian Government (federal and provincial) competitive intelligence (CI) programs and to also look at the impact of these programs on sectoral and regional economic development.

Based on the author’s 25 years of experience designing, running, and studying Canadian Government CI programs, a classification scheme to classify these programs has been developed and used. Also, by using program review information, this paper looks at evidence for program impact on regional and sectoral economic development.

This paper identifies a broad range of federal and provincially sponsored CI programs aimed at helping both government officers and those outside the department make better decisions. The review identified several roles that the government can play in using CI: creator of CI (both for their own purposes and also for helping Canadian companies), CI environment skills builder (helping Canadian companies develop skills in developing their own CI) and CI partner (working jointly with Canadian companies in developing CI). While there have not been many formal program reviews of the CI programs sponsored by Canadian Government departments and agencies, anecdotal evidence (from training program participant evaluations) and a comprehensive review of a small community CI-based economic development program support positive sectoral and regional economic development results arising from these programs.

CI programs can be used as part of a government’s regional and sectoral economic development approach. CI can be used to assist with decision-making both within and outside the government. This paper identifies several different kinds of programs that can be used to further a government’s economic development agenda.

There are very few articles that examine how governments have helped companies to develop CI and how they have used CI, and none has looked at the impact of these on regional and sectoral economic development. This paper, based on the author’s experiences, provides a view of the Canadian programs and their impact on regional/sectoral economic development.

This article seeks to investigate the knowledge sharing processes in expert teams working with foresighting, creating knowledge for and about the future in electronic work groups.

Observations and assessments have been made this study in two expert workshops conducted on the European level aimed at assessing the true status of plausible hydrogen technologies and their potential.

Building on an understanding of knowledge sharing as cyclic in its orientation, it is proposed that knowledge creation in expert teams draws heavily on latent knowledge embedded in the individual experts. Explicating latent knowledge is seen as occurring during reconstructions that involve questioning, confrontations and debates. Such reconstructions are not fully explicated in the dualistic representation of knowledge often referred to as explicit and tacit.

Based on the assumption that expertise used in foresighting is embedded in some sort of implicit knowledge, which is latent, but not necessarily expressed previously, two hypotheses are proposed to be explored and pursued by means of a quasi‐experimental design to improve the understanding of the nature of knowledge creation and sharing processes as well as the linkage between implicit and explicit knowledge.

As a nominal group process, the use of an interactive electronic workshop seemingly produces information (ideas, assessments, measures, actions, etc.) more unbiased, more effectively and more abundantly than traditional expert groups.

This research contributes to the discussions of the linkages between the use of electronic work groups as a mode for eliciting expert information, and the foresight strategic planning processes.

With intelligence (a field related to foresight) practice growing, the purpose of this study was to examine the practices of Canadian competitive intelligence (CI) practitioners.

Survey of Canadian CI practitioners who are SCIP members (Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professional), using a revision to a previously used instrument designed to examine competitive intelligence practices.

Canadian SCIP member competitive intelligence practices seem to be more formalized than those found in the global SCIP study in 2006 with 84.8 per cent having a manager with CI responsibilities, 61 per cent with a formal centralized CI unit and only 9 per cent responding that CI was done informally. Intelligence units were generally smaller with 38 per cent having one full-time CI resource and 41 per cent having between 2 and 4 full-time resources. Additional findings on information sources used, analytical techniques used, evaluation methods and communication methods are reported.

Despite getting responses from close to 50 per cent of SCIP members, the small sample size (79) makes it difficult to generalize the results beyond the Canadian SCIP environment and limits the testing that can be done.

The last study on Canadian competitive intelligence practices was in 2008, thus part of the originality of the study was getting more recent information on corporate intelligence practice. In addition, this is the first Canadian study to focus specifically on known intelligence practitioners (SCIP members). Past studies focused on companies in general regardless of whether respondents knew what competitive intelligence was or practiced CI.

The study aims to discuss the role of strategic foresight in determining and mapping possible property futures. In particular, the briefing will explore the importance of determining alternative futures and creating scenarios to help determine a flexible and adaptable strategy.

This education briefing is an overview of property futures and strategic foresight.

This is an education briefing of existing knowledge.

Strategic foresight provides a framework and structure by identifying a focal point that looks at alternative futures and a preferred future that feed into the implementation of a strategic plan.

This is a review of existing models.

This paper aims to provide a meta-analysis of the main themes emerging from public domain foresight studies on the defence and security environment undertaken in the decade since the 9/11 attacks on the USA. The authors focus mainly on foresight studies undertaken in Europe.

The paper is based on a content analysis of public domain foresight studies.

Foresight studies on the defence and security environment reflect a shift in security thinking away from a focus on state-centric threats towards a much broader view of security risks that includes risks presented by the vulnerability of European society to the failure of critical infrastructure, to pandemics, environmental change and resource based conflicts. The authors place a particular emphasis on the treatment of technological change in these defence and security foresight studies and argue that the growing importance of dual-use technologies is likely to mean that defence will play a declining role as a sponsor and lead-user of advanced technologies in the future.

Foresight studies on the defence and security environment have grown in number since 9/11 not least in Europe. However, they have been the subject of little systematic analysis. This paper makes a contribution to such an analysis.

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on innovation systems dynamics and the positioning of Europe in a longer term perspective, with special attention to the international governance of the major challenges which humanity is facing.

The method used is based on a secondary analysis and interpretation of Foresight studies. The underlying assumption is that Foresight exercises can be considered as the scene where techno-economic systems and trajectories are proposed, discussed and shaped.

Foresights can be distinguished by the challenges and issues they focus on: – the innovation race: competitiveness and influence through innovation, – the thematic concerns: the stakes of global public goods, – the normative perspectives: a new style of development in the making. The question to know whether Europe can be a world driver in fostering responsible innovation models and cooperative modes of knowledge circulation and global challenges handling through relevant social and technological innovations.

This paper reviews and puts in perspective Foresight exercises in an original way, this on two grounds: first, it includes exercises fostered at national, regional (in particular the EU) and global (UN system) levels – this to account for the emerging multi-level governance and, second, it classifies them according to their major focus, namely the innovation race, the thematic concerns (global public goods) and the normative perspectives (new style of development). It provides to the actors of innovation in both the public and private sector an understanding of the current key-concerns and visions on innovation systems and the position of Europe.