Corporate Foresight: Its Three Roles in Enhancing the Innovation Capacity of a Firm

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 78, No. 2, pp. 231-243

31 Pages Posted: 31 May 2010 Last revised: 12 Jun 2014

See all articles by René Rohrbeck

René Rohrbeck

EDHEC Business School

Hans Georg Gemünden

Technical University of Berlin

Date Written: Feb 1, 2011

Abstract

Although in the last three decades much knowledge has been produced on how best to conduct foresight exercises, but little is known on how foresight should be integrated with the innovation effort of a company. Drawing on empirical evidence from 19 case studies and 107 interviews, we identify three roles that corporate foresight should play to maximize the innovation capacity of a firm: (1) the strategist role, which explores new business fields; (2) the initiator role, which increases the number of innovation concepts and ideas; and (3) the opponent role, which challenges innovation projects to increase the quality of their output.

Keywords: corporate foresight, innovation management, technology intelligence, competitive intelligence, best practices, dynamic capabilities

JEL Classification: E17, M1, M19

Suggested Citation

Rohrbeck, René and Gemuenden, Hans Georg, Corporate Foresight: Its Three Roles in Enhancing the Innovation Capacity of a Firm (Feb 1, 2011). Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 78, No. 2, pp. 231-243, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1618523

René Rohrbeck (Contact Author)

EDHEC Business School ( email )

France

HOME PAGE: http://edhec.edu

Hans Georg Gemuenden

Technical University of Berlin ( email )

Strasse des 17
10623 Berlin
Germany

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