Foresight for SMEs: How to Overcome the Limitations in Small Firms?

This paper describes an approach to foresight for SME enterprises. Foresight has become a frequently used tool for technology and innovation management generally limited large corporations. Presumably this is mainly due to the complexity of the corporate foresight concept itself and the need to invest substantial resources. To overcome this challenge and make corporate foresight also applicable for small and medium sized enterprises an adjusted methodological approach is developed taking into account the special requirements and limitations of SMEs. Based on an analysis of best practices for the development of theoretical and methodological approaches to foresight for SMEs an approach is developed taking into account the limitations of financial, human and time resources inherent to SMEs is introduced.

Keywords: corporate foresight, SMEs, roadmapping, innovation, scenarios

JEL Classification: O11; O18; O32

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Vishnevskiy, Konstantin and Meissner, Dirk and Egorova, Olga, Foresight for SMEs: How to Overcome the Limitations in Small Firms? (August 13, 2015). Higher School of Economics Research Paper No. WP BRP 45/STI/2015, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2643405 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2643405