Foresight in corporates

Abstract

This master thesis is written for the master program Strategic Product Design with the Belgian company Barco NV as a client. At the beginning, the main objective was to gain a better understanding on the current situation of the organization around foresight activities, their barriers and challenges. The aim was to later develop a solution that could help them to overcome those challenges discovered and to have a more proactive attitude towards the future.
Barco NV is a well-known technology company with a tradition as a hardware manufacturer. Barco is currently going through a digital transformation and counts on a renewed strategy that also considers customer centricity and business innovation as starting points for innovation as relevant as technology. However, in practice this is much more complex, and the firm is step by step evolving into that ideal. The company tends to end up focusing mostly in the short term. This happens, among other reasons, because of a lack of skills, a non-tangible or workable company vision, and the self-pressure on meeting their economic plans. This causes the proposition of short-term businesses and therefore limits the explorative attitude in the firm. To support in this challenge, the initial phase of the thesis was focused on gaining a better understanding on the current challenges in Barco around foresight activities. As such, literature study in corporate foresight and some of its methods like scenario planning was employed. In parallel, internal research based on interviews with Barco employees gave the first keys to discover the barriers that the firm was facing and the feeling towards them. Thanks to the research done and the insights gained in Barco, the focus was on defining and co-creating a workshop. This workshop would enable Barco teams to shape future scenarios and improve their foresight skills. However, due to certain events that were taking place in Barco, this solution couldn’t be pursued and a new opportunity emerged.
The Scenario Creation workshop was upgraded into a theoretical framework, which was developed with the input of three technology corporates and the recommendations of two consultants. All these professionals had links and personal interest in topics around innovation, foresight, design thinking and strategy. This framework was created to support Barco in having a better and holistic understanding on the business context in which the firm operates and its surroundings. In this way, it will help them in anticipating to changes in the three horizons of innovation. At the same time, it brings a change in mindset where the validation of hypotheses about future innovations plays a crucial role by involving external experts and end users in the scenario creation process. Finally, it brings a better way to communicate innovation and to test future scenarios: externally, to get them challenged by experts, and internally, to create a shared language for innovation. The foresight framework is characterized for combining design thinking principles, like user-centeredness, iteration, validation, creativity, inspiration and abstract and concrete thinking, with deep knowledge in foresight activities and scenario planning.