Circles of Impression: External Foresight in Global Enterprises

This chapter analyzes the impact of corporate foresight by means of its circles of impression, from top management and outward at varying distances from the management board. The concept of circles of impression includes processes of communication, and the influence of this communication to impact change, and is demonstrated to be useful and possible to apply to a wide target class, including strategic and networked foresight efforts. The comparative study described in this chapter focuses on two organizations: an industrial for-profit company and a nonprofit non-governmental organization (NGO). Delivered at a critical time for large global enterprises, the study of foresight activities was carried out in complete independence, scoping by time to point of entry (PoE) and by general area, as provided by the stakeholder. The study covered four future trends, with one—robust artificial intelligence (AI)—reported on here to exemplify and detail the forms of reporting. In the introspective and critical analysis of this foresight work, the role of foresight validator is added to the three roles of corporate foresight known in the research literature: strategist, initiator, and opponent. As the concept of circles of impression is shown to generalize to both global corporate and global nonprofit organizations, a final discussion merges experiences with related conclusions and recommendations for ongoing studies.