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The purpose of this study is to explore the principal research query and whether strategic foresight deployed by entrepreneurial firms in energy transition aims at crafting future readiness.

With a focus on entrepreneurial firms working in the alternative energy segment in the Indian context, the intent is to examine the deployment of strategic foresight by incumbent firms and their entrepreneurial journey. The authors have adopted the approach of Eisenhardt for this research. The area of interest for the authors entailing strategic foresight by entrepreneurial firms in energy transition aligns with defining features reflecting the aim of Eisenhardt method for this exploratory research coupled with constructivism.

While the future scenarios in the energy sector have to be necessarily multiple, their alignment with different geographic, economic, demographic and political outlooks shall be defined by the pathways niched through the deployment of strategic foresight for arriving at those scenarios.

Strategic foresight deployed by entrepreneurial firms has the potential to create future readiness through self-reliant sustainable economic value chains for local populace, thus propagating holistic development in remote regions.

This paper attempts to knit together the domains of strategic foresight, entrepreneurial firms and energy transition through case research and present the future thinking deployed for navigation in uncharted pathways by capturing the foresight component of these incumbent firms chosen through careful case selection. The narrative has been strengthened by the varied interviews across participants and the observations made by the authors during the research work.

The present research identifies a total of nine factors influencing tax avoidance under the international taxation regime of the developing countries and establishes a hierarchical relationship through modeling of the identified factors using modified-total interpretive structural modeling (M-TISM).

Due to “scale without mass” properties of the digital economy, businesses reduce their physical presence in the countries of economic activities. Aided with digital features, multinational enterprises (MNEs) avoid, abolish, or adopt flexible tax burden in the developing nations through by-passing the permanent establishment condition for company taxes or the income characterization prerequisite for royalty taxation. The present research endeavors to identify the drivers of tax avoidance in the developing countries, especially exacerbated due to digital technologies (economy). In addition, the authors also examine the hierarchical relation between the extracted drivers of tax avoidance.

This research presents a considerable driving force of elements like historical foundation of tax-treaties, dominance of the developed countries, influence of trade bodies in policy matters and finally information and communications technologies (ICTs).

Identified elements drive the actors like professional enablers, tax havens, international organizations, and intangible assets in the form of intellectual properties (IPs) which act upon tax arbitrage situations both under the domestic and treaty regulations, finally culminating into profit shifting, tax manipulations or avoidance.

This paper aims to investigate how and when visual referents in brand visual aesthetics (i.e. colours, shapes, patterns and materials) serve as design applications that enable consumer diasporic identity.

This paper uses an innovative methodology that triangulates 58 in-depth interviews with diasporic consumers, 9 interviews with brand managers and designers and a visual analysis of brands (food retailer, spices and nuts, skincare, hair and cosmetics, ice cream and wine) to provide a view of the phenomenon from multiple perspectives.

This study illustrates how and when particular applications and compositions of product and design referents support diasporic identity for Middle Eastern consumers living outside the Middle East. Specifically, it illustrates how the design applications of harmonising (applying separate ancestral homeland and culture of living product and design referents simultaneously), homaging (departing from the culture of living product and design referents with a subtle tribute to ancestral homeland culture) and heritaging (departing from the ancestral homeland culture product and design referents with slight updates to a culture of living style) can enable diasporic identity in particular social situations.

Although applied to the Middle Eastern diaspora, this research opens up interesting avenues for future research that assesses diasporic consumers’ responses to brands seeking to use visual design to engage with this market. Moreover, future research should explore these design applications in relation to issues of cultural appreciation and appropriation.

The hybrid design compositions identified in this study can provide brand managers with practical tools for navigating the design process when targeting a diasporic segment. The design applications and their consequences are discussed while visually demonstrating how they can be crafted.

While previous research mainly focused on how consumption from the ancestral homeland occurred, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine how hybrid design compositions that combine a diaspora’s ancestral homeland culture and their culture of living simultaneously and to varying degrees resonate with diasporic consumers.