Global Compact International Yearbook 2012

Agenda
Corporate Foresight
approach). Different disciplines and research fields must be
brought together and a common language discovered. This
interdisciplinary collaboration requires the company to be
able to innovate. Thirdly, both fields pay great attention to
the translation of their findings into practical action. The
results of foresight processes and sustainability research can
be used to solve problems within society and the organization
and to develop future-proof strategies. Finally, foresight
and sustainability both pursue – at least to a certain extent
– resolutely normative approaches. Although corporate foresight
might only sometimes take a normative approach (e.g.,
back-casting scenarios), approaches to sustainable development
are always normative. Normative approaches enable
organizations to think beyond what is necessary and feasible
at the present moment.
Particularly if there is greater interlinking of sustainability
management, corporate foresight, and strategy development,
it should be possible to develop more attractive offerings for
companies that make a contribution to solving the global
sustainability challenges.
Software-based foresight
More and more, software tools are used in foresight processes;
by using them, the predominantly qualitative findings can be
augmented to include quantitative indicators and projections.
As such, scenarios can be developed, for example, that encompass
both a qualitative description of a particular image of the
future and also contain quantitative indicators for this view.
Examples of such quantified scenarios include, among others,
the UNEP World Water Scenarios, the scenarios of Shell or the
International Energy Agency, as well as the Global Europe
2030/2050 scenarios developed by the EU’s panel of experts,
with the size of the quantitative part differing in each case. By
combining narratives and numbers, it is possible to improve
the acceptance of the results by management, meaning that
the findings can be fed more easily into numbers-driven
strategic planning processes.
Against this backdrop, modeling and system dynamics are
experiencing a renaissance. In addition, web-based tools
such as Real-Time Delphi and Prediction Markets also play a
greater role in practice. With their help, it is possible to tap
into the collective intelligence of employees or experts when
evaluating future trends. Further increases in processing
power, a web with a greater emphasis on semantics, and the
exploding availability of data (big data) all lead to the expectation
that there will also be approaches in the future that
use intelligent algorithms to carry out, (semi-)autonomously,
individual stages within the foresight process. In theory, this
could even stretch right up to the simulation of the future
behavior of social systems by analyzing massive collections
of real-world data.
In the future, however, intelligent tools are not expected to
provide much more than mere assistance in the participation
process, which will become more important, in order to
guarantee that the results are accepted by the decision-makers
within the company. Otherwise, there is the danger that management
becomes overly dependent on impenetrably complex
computing operations that can already be seen within sectors
of the financial markets.
Summary
The necessity to adjust tools to strategic planning is apparent
in view of the many and varied challenges that companies
will have to surmount over the coming decade. Corporate
foresight is an approach that is becoming increasingly established
within the strategic management portfolio. Despite all
the challenges that exist from a methodological and practical
perspective, today, corporate foresight can be deemed a success
story. Corporate foresight builds on participation and
commitment, which is why the processes require sufficient
time and resources. For organizations that wish to shape the
future in a responsible manner and whose decisions also impact
on successive generations, it is advisable that they deal
intensively, systematically, and methodically with the pressing
future issues of the day. What is more, corporate foresight offers
a broad range of tried-and-tested access points to do so.
Read the full article with additional information on:
foresight.csr-manager.org
Cornelia Daheim is
managing partner of
Z_punkt.
Holger Glockner is Director
Foresight Consulting at
Z_punkt.
The Millennium Project
Experience
The explosion of information, the increasing complexity of society, and the
accelerating rate of technological change means previous information systems
and sources are unable to give just-in-time guidance to inform the strategic
planning process. One approach to improve input to strategic foresight is
collective intelligence. I define it as an emergent property from synergies
among data/information/knowledge, software/hardware, and experts (those
with new insights as well as recognized authorities) that continually learn from
feedback to produce just-in-time knowledge for better decisions than these
elements would produce acting alone. The Millennium Project is a new kind of
think tank producing foresight about the changing global strategic landscape.
Its operations, implications for corporations, and next steps in creating a Global
Futures Collective Intelligence System will be explained.
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