پیش بینی استراتژیک برای اکتشاف مشارکتی زمینه های کسب و کار جدید

To ensure long-term competitiveness, companies need to develop the ability to explore, plan, and develop new business fields. A suitable approach faces multiple challenges because it needs to (1) integrate multiple perspectives, (2) ensure a high level of participation of the major stakeholders and decision-makers, (3) function despite a high level of uncertainty, and (4) take into account interdependencies between the influencing factors. In this paper, we present an integrated approach that combines multiple strategic-foresight methods in a synergetic way. It was applied in an inter-organizational business field exploration project in the telecommunications industry.

In the past decades, much knowledge has been generated on how to conduct foresight activities. In the 1960s, scholars started to study national foresight programs. They aimed to identify future technologies that would generate the largest potential for economic welfare [1]. In a corporate context, foresight activities have been employed to make better long-term decisions [2] and [3], support innovation activities [4] and strategic planning by identifying alternative trajectories [5] for emerging technology [6] trends and creating future scenarios [7]. As a result, we now have a rich body of knowledge of methods that can be used to address specific management challenges. In our literature review, we argue that more knowledge is needed to successfully apply strategic-foresight techniques to complex planning tasks such as exploring new business fields [[8], [9] and [10]]. From a company's perspective, new business fields are characterized by a multi-dimensional uncertainty [11] that results in typical planning questions such as: Is there an underserved demand? If yes, how much are customers willing to pay? How can the demand be satisfied? Should we address the market with a product, a service, or a hybrid product that combines both a physical product and a service? Which (emerging) technologies should be used to build the product and service? How will we produce? Is the business opportunity financially interesting? This multi-dimensional uncertainty translates into the “chicken or egg” dilemma: if the firm does not know which technologies it should employ to build a certain product, it will not be able to define the properties of the final product. If the product properties are unknown, it cannot ask its potential customers how much they are willing to pay. If the willingness to pay is unknown, so is the business potential. This will make it impossible to take the required investment decisions. This dilemma results in a dual planning challenge: (a) dealing with uncertainty, and (b) dealing with the interdependencies between the multiple aspects of the new business fields. Our point of departure is the expectation that strategic-foresight methods could help to reduce the uncertainty and that the challenge of interdependencies can be met by integrating multiple methods. More specifically, we expect that strategic foresight could help in (1) combining an external trend analysis with an internal analysis [12], (2) facilitating the strategy-formation process [[13], [14] and [15]], (3) supporting strategic decision-making [16] and [17], and (4) moderating innovation planning [4] and [18]. Based on strategic-management frameworks and strategic-foresight methods, we have developed such an integrated methodology that is designed to support collaborative business field exploration. In this article, we report on the application of the methodology in a pilot project that aimed to explore the new market for intelligent and adaptive management of broadband networks. This is a potentially large market that enables the delivery of high-quality services over the Internet such as Internet Protocol-based Television (IPTV), multimedia services that build on high-quality video streaming, or broadband-intensive cloud-computing applications that require reliable connections. It is also a new business field in which multiple parties need to work together to jointly create a market and come up with solutions. In our case, a consortium of nine partners from academia and industry came together to conduct the project collaboratively.

In our literature review, we have argued that more research is needed to understand how foresight activities can be successfully applied in a corporate context. When companies wish to explore and develop new business fields, they are faced with a particularly challenging task that is characterized by (1) the need to integrate multiple perspectives, (2) a high level of uncertainty, (3) interdependencies between customer needs, technological capabilities, competitor behavior, legislative contingencies, production cost, etc., and (4) the need to involve a high number of external experts and internal stakeholders. We have discussed that it might have a merit to combine multiple foresight methods and shown that there are documented approaches that aim to combine foresight methods to (1) make them more reliable, (2) integrate qualitative and quantitative data, and (3) integrate different perspectives. In this paper we have described the application of an integrated methodology to explore a potential future market in the telecommunications industry. Therein we attempted to answer the following four guiding questions: • What should the key product properties be? • Who are the relevant actors, what are their interests, and how is power distributed among them? • What are the barriers and drivers for the business field? • Has the new business field the potential to become financially viable? The sequence of the complementary methods exploits methodological synergies. Results and data that are only intermediate results from analyses used early on in the methodology are often re-used in later stages. Additionally, the methodology is highly interactive and fosters integration of cross-functional team members and calls for the involvement of external experts. Achieving optimal results with the proposed integrated methodology requires an iterative process. This, however, is difficult to realize due to time pressure and resource limitations in the exploration phase of new business fields. It should be noted that not all new business fields can be explored with foresight and planned ex ante. In the absence of planability, companies have to rely on serendipity, i.e., start multiple business-field development initiatives and wait and see which will produce promising results. Therefore, companies will need to rely on corporate venturing schemes to move into new business fields through an entrepreneurial push [94] in addition to foresight activities.