Benefits
Technology cannot be considered in isolation from environmental, social, economic and political factors and all these factors can affect a company’s performance and outlook. The quality of decision-making in strategic planning can be improved by information on these factors and by the knowledge and experience learned from obtaining such information.
Forecasting and foresight extend and expand the benefits of near-term market intelligence and simultaneously stimulate learning and improvement practices.
Forecasting and foresight studies try to shed light upon the nature, magnitude, probability and timing of relevant scientific and technological developments. These can be opportunities or threats and might have a potential impact either on a single enterprise or on several or many enterprises collectively. They might have an impact on supply-chains, industry sectors or consumer markets.
It is sometimes important that national governments and international organisations, such as health and environmental agencies, should set up forecasting and foresight activities. These activities can complement the formal or informal planning, marketing or forecasting and foresight activities set up by business associations and/or individual companies. A co-incidental benefit of national or international studies that are conducted in a participative way is that they can facilitate networking between companies.
Much of the value of engaging in foresight activities at a company level lies in working through the processes themselves rather than just reading the results and formal reports arising from the exercise.
Foresight information can give greater legitimacy to vision statements. A common reason for a company to change its Chief Executive Officer is to inject a new vision into the organisation. Foresighting exercises can provide an alternative way to inject new vision; they are less dependent on the talent or inspiration of a few key individuals. A wide representation of employees can be involved in foresighting, or can learn about its impact and results; this has direct benefits since the vision is already communicated and better understood across the organisation. There are also indirect benefits in terms of empowerment, motivation and learning.