Technological Forecasting and Social Change · 2018 · 268 citations · 52 references
Corporate foresight is expected to help firms break path dependency, guide superior decisions, and improve performance. The study empirically tests whether a model that compares a firm’s need for corporate foresight to its practice maturity can predict future preparedness. The authors employ a longitudinal design measuring future preparedness in 2008 and its 2015 performance impact, using a model that compares need for corporate foresight to practice maturity and estimates bonus or discount for firms. Future preparedness strongly predicts industry outperformance, higher profitability, and greater market‑capitalization growth.
Corporate foresight is applied with the expectation that it will help firms to break away from path dependency, help decision makers to define superior courses of action, and ultimately enable superior firm performance. To empirically test this assumption, we developed a model that judges a firm’s future preparedness (FP) by assessing the need for corporate foresight (CF) and comparing it to the maturity of its CF practices. We apply a longitudinal research design in which we measure future preparedness in 2008 and its impact on firm performance in 2015. The results indicated future preparedness to be a powerful predictor for becoming an outperformer in the industry, for attaining superior profitability, and for gaining superior market capitalization growth. In the article, we also calculate the average bonus/discount that can be expected by sufficiently/insufficiently future-prepared firms.
52