رادار بازارهای آینده: مطالعه موردی پیش بینی استراتژیک کاربردی

This article describes a project in corporate practice. A large European corporation conducted a project called ‘Future Markets-Radar’ to identify future market opportunities that lie beyond their present attention. The top executives, who were deeply involved in the project, used a systematic process based on the author's Five Futures Glasses and a comprehensive semantic model of objects of thought, called the Eltville Model and a set of appropriate tools to achieve the goals of the project. The results laid the foundation for future success in future markets, solidified and enriched the corporate strategy and increased the future competence of the people involved. This article proposes a model of the corporate disciplines and goals of future management, a definition of what a future market is, key questions on future markets, a process for early recognition of future markets as well as a summary of the project's results and benefits.

Corporate foresight or future management, as our firm prefers to call it, has become a mainstream function in many respects. However, this did not happen because the practitioners in the corporations and organizations have accepted the theoretical concepts that many futurists try to sell. Neither all too simplistic scenario methods nor mathematically perfect processes made that possible. Instead, future management has gone mainstream because the practitioners found ways to connect and to apply foresight methods and tools to real problems and challenges. Identifying future market opportunities has always been and today has become even more of an existential, pivotal goal and process today. Although only one application has been featured here, there are many more applications for future management in real business. A second foundation and prerequisite for successful foresight projects is an integrated model of the processes and the objects of thought. Too many theorists and practitioners have made bundles of steps, methods and tools, with which they then tried to cope with all the many loose ends. It is only with a clear, integrated model, like the Eltville Model, that thinking, working and communicating about the future can be made an epistemologically and methodologically solid endeavor.