| Managerial Foresight is a critical
capability for innovation - i.e., the ability to gain a deeper
understanding than competitors of the trends and discontinuities –
technological, demographic, regulatory, lifestyle – that could be
used to transform and create new competitive space.
Organizations that possess Managerial Foresight are better
positioned to establish a strategy that leverages future trends –
and even helps define them – to create a leadership position in the
marketplace .
Gaining and applying Managerial Foresight is a continuous activity
that requires an organization to:
- Engage in processes that define an explicit linkage between
the evolving external environment, potential growth
opportunities, and business strategies/tactics.
- Create an ongoing capability for tracking and quickly responding
to positive or potentially detrimental changes in the competitive
business environment.
- View “Opportunity Planning” as an ongoing process, rather than
as an annual event, such as “Strategic Planning”.
As stated by CK Prahalad and Gary Hamel in their seminal book
Competing for the Future: "There is not one future but
hundreds. Getting to the future first is not just about outrunning
competitors bent on reaching the same prize. It is also about having
one's view of what the prize is. There can be as many prizes as
runners; imagination is the only limiting factor. In business, as in
art, what distinguishes leaders from laggards, and greatness from
mediocrity, is the ability to uniquely imagine what could be".
Managerial Foresight is about finding the future first. It is
about competing to create and dominate emerging opportunities - to
stake out new competitive space. Finding the future first is more
challenging than playing catch up, in that you have to create your
own road map. The goal is to develop an independent point of view
about tomorrow's opportunities and how to exploit them. Path
breaking is a lot more rewarding than benchmarking. One doesn't get
to the future first by letting someone else blaze the trail. |
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