Introduction The Challenge All of our experience is with the past, but all of our decisions are about the future. Leaders at every level have usually assumed that their past experience is a fairly reliable guide to the future—the future will simply be a bigger and better version of the world with which they are familiar. This kind of continuity of change, however, can no longer be taken for granted. In area after area today, we are confronted by true uncertainty: we really do not know what will happen, but we know it is happening more quickly! In the first part of the 21st century we are entering a very different world. The pace of change is accelerating. For example, in the fields of information technology, communications, and biotechnology, major advances are occurring in the range of every 12 to 24 months, in some cases making what we have known obsolete. Over the next 25 years certain technologies could advance almost a million-fold. With changes of this magnitude, the world becomes a fundamentally different place - one that we have little idea of how to cope with. Throughout history it has always been difficult for individuals and organizations to adapt to change – consider the challenges faced in the shift from an agrarian to an industrial society – a shift that took more than 50 years to complete and yet, the entire transition was problematic. A more immediate example is the evolution of the mobile (Figure 1). It has gone from it being a mobile landline to an extremely a smart mobile phone in just under 30 years! Figure 1 trial
(elements that are the key forces shaping the topic being considered) and in developing scenarios as well. Developing Scanning as a Technique Scanning involves searching through various information sources to identify trends and emerging developments. Most individuals do scanning all the time – especially since we have become steeped in social media. Government agencies, not for profit and for profit agencies likewise monitor relevant media, trade publications, scientific or technical journals related to their line of work. Organized scanning can be as informal as a group discussion of what participants are observing or as formal as a well-funded formalized system to monitor trends. Scanning efforts are best done on a continuing basis to provide a ‘futures radar’ that constantly functions to identify emerging threats and opportunities. important decisions about the scanning process arise as the approach is designed. The first is specifying the audience (who in the organization will learn from the scanning) and what the objectives are (e.g. enhancing ongoing operations, identifying new product opportunities, and/or exploring competitive or other threats.) The second is to determine the level of resources and sources to be used: how many internal staff will be involved and for what percentage of their time. What outside resources will be used e.g.: having another organization conduct the scanning and/or the scanning and briefings. Organizations with higher budgets and more staff with content expertise are able to scan a wider variety of sources and to explore sources that are further ‘upstream’, i.e. those studying weak signals and emerging trends that will affect a future. There are ever growing web-based scanning and aggregating services or apps that can be significant. Figure 5 The third decision involves choosing a framework for environmental scanning. As noted above, it should include the macro - environment and the operating environment. A classic framework is STEEPV (Figure 5), standing for Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political and Values, which ensures that each of these areas is scanned for developments important to the organization. To see an example of STEEPV go to: ().