In this article we intend to make an approximation of the new modern discipline called "Prospective" as the science of the future, we begin with a series of transcendent questions that all organizations must ask. We have surely wondered if today's success will be tomorrow's success?
Need to plan for the future
Organizations must not only live and delight in the successes of the present, but continue to dream and plan a promising future, the successes will be the failures of tomorrow, it is not enough to formulate a strategic plan, we well know that according to Robert Kaplan of ten strategic plans formulated adequately only one is successfully implemented, and that among the most common causes we fundamentally have the numbness of the management levels, lack of vision, prospects and problems basically in managerial attitudes, conformism, scarce competences to inspire, motivate and enthuse their collaborators; Benchmarking is not necessarily a solution, but it is a constant need that can help ensure your long-term future.
Organizations need to look more prospectively at a new long-term strategic vision and ask themselves, what new needs will we have to satisfy in front of our clients? What will the new consumer culture look like? How to effectively manage the new workforce? What technologies will be necessary? These and other questions we must answer in the here and now.
Definition of prospective
“Foresight is the science that studies the future to understand it and be able to influence it. Although in fact it is, paradoxically, a science without an object that moves between the need to predict what may happen and the desire to invent the best possible future ”.
Two other well-known definitions described by researchers from the United Kingdom, we will quote Ben Martin (1995), describes the prospective as “The research process that requires systematically looking at the long-term future in science, technology, economy and society, with the objective of identify the strategic research areas and emerging generic technologies that will generate the greatest economic and social benefits ”.
For his part, Luke Georghiou (1996) describes foresight as "a systematic means of evaluating scientific and technological developments that could have a strong impact on industrial competitiveness, wealth creation and quality of life."
The important features in these definitions are the periodic (time horizons that range from 5 to 30 years) and systematic nature of these studies, as well as the importance of balancing the thrust of scientific-technological developments with market demand.
For their part, these studies should not be dominated solely by technological aspects. It is important that the analysis be geared towards social aspects that go beyond wealth creation and include issues such as crime prevention, equity, education, skills building, or aging society.
Prospective studies as an important strategy
The prospective studies allow identification, anticipation and projection of trends in social, economic and technological fields, using interactive methods and participatory debate to forge new social networks. For this, it is crucial to identify a strategic vision that is not utopian but rather recognizes and explains its implications for the correct decisions and actions of today.
Having a business philosophy and a guiding vision is vital for contemporary organizations due to the constant changes in the highly changing and competitive environment, as Heraclitus of Ephesus (535 BC) said “the only permanent thing in the world is change”, affirming that the foundation of everything is in the incessant change, for his part Peter Druker (1990) referred that “changes occur in the world every 24 hours”, we can feel this daily in everything we do and see our around.
Everything that a company may have built up to today will be ephemeral in the future if it is not tuned to the speed of change, we believe that no organization should rest on its laurels, today's companies will not necessarily be the best of tomorrow and this is the base to survive in this modern world, having a guiding philosophy will be essential.
People and companies must prepare together for future changes, they must anticipate, adapt to the phenomena emitted by those situations that arise in this changing world, such as business to build the future; In other words, do not wait for things to happen to take measures that may not be so opportune, because although the future cannot be accurately predicted, we can imagine our preferred tomorrow.
Managers, entrepreneurs, professionals, administrators and executives in charge of decision-making in public and private organizations are involved in this challenge.
Reasons why strategic foresight is important in the company
There are many reasons why foresight is important that require us to identify and understand, in a systematic way, the dominant trends in the international economy: where research and development of new technologies is heading and how it affects our businesses and the quality of life in our country.
Among them, we will point out below some of those that are usually considered among the most relevant.
Competition increases rapidly and has a sudden impact on markets and societies, increasing rivalry not only between countries but also between companies. In the last 12 years, for example, many new players have entered the group of “market economies”, especially in Asia and Central Europe, offering new business and investment opportunities.
This increase in competition follows two main vectors. On the one hand, we are witnessing a huge (and perhaps unprecedented) labor cost differential, in a context in which companies can move their resources and production much more quickly and easily than in any past era.
Technological innovation and the demand that it generates in terms of increasing knowledge and skills are putting more and more direct and immediate pressure on markets, products and public and business policies.
Recent studies of technology forecasting in the United States began to be used around 1950 in the area of defense production. The Rand Corporation, for example, in various consulting jobs, was responsible for the development of some of the main instruments used in this technique, such as the “Delphi” measurement form. Large forecasting exercises were carried out in the United States Navy and Aeronautics. And private companies applied it to the energy sector. Despite the scarce relationship with the market provided by the area in which the prospective studies specialized, its use was losing followers. However, in the late 1980s and as a result of what was perceived as a Japanese threat to American competitiveness, theforesight techniques returned to the fore. It was then that the Department of Commerce, the Council for Competitiveness and the Office of Science and Technology Policy began to use the renewed foresight techniques again.
Despite having been the United States that began in 1950 with the use of these techniques, it was the Japanese who developed them to their full potential. Convinced that they represented a potentially useful tool for formulating policy, they sent a team of people to consult experts in the United States.
In 1970 the Japanese had developed their own foresight strategy and applied it to produce a first forecast about the future of science and technology, with a time horizon of 30 years. Said study was prepared by the Science and Technology Agency and is normally considered the first prospective technology study itself.
The objective of this was to produce an overview that looks at the fields of science and technology as a whole, in order to provide business intelligence on long-term trends to policymakers in the public and private sectors. In this way, they would be in a position to decide the broad outlines of the direction to be taken in order to reach the forefront of progress. Thousands of experts from industry, universities and government participated in the preparation of this report, which has been repeated every 5 years since then.
In the Netherlands, this seems to have been the first European country to use foresight techniques in the 1970s to examine the relationship between science and society. In the 1980s, the sectoral councils (for agriculture, health and the environment) carried out several prospective studies and in the 1990s a committee assumed the tasks of coordinating these studies throughout the country.
In Germany, the widespread use that this technique began to have in other countries and, above all, the unification and the problems of recession and structural adjustment that the German economy faced, led the country to incorporate (after 1990) the use of prospective techniques.
Information was sought on the use of this instrument in the United States and assistance was sought from Japan, which was now in its fifth periodic (five-year) foresight exercise. Later, and based on its own experience, Germany would collaborate with the sixth Japanese exercise on the matter.
In the early 1980s, France developed several foresight exercises. However, it was only after 1994 that they began to be carried out in a systematic way, based on traditional tools such as Delphi forms. At the end of this decade the technique spread to countries such as Australia, Canada, Norway and Sweden.
In 1994 the UK launched the first technology foresight exercise. Since then, several more countries have applied this technique, such as Italy, Spain (which creates its Office of Technological Foresight), Ireland, Austria, Hungary, South Africa, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Thailand, India and Turkey.
The type of analysis required to face the competition has become more complex. In a context where a large number of countries and companies (committed to achieving and maintaining competitive leadership in a knowledge-based economy) use this technique, bypassing its use may reduce the ability to compete in the future or give a significant advantage to potential competitors in the race for prosperity and leadership.
The growing concern about the interaction between the competitive capacity of a country and social factors such as unemployment and working conditions, inequalities and the level of social cohesion, the environment and the sustainability of the production process, the risks associated with the emergency of new technologies as well as the distribution of its benefits, requires the formulation of increasingly sophisticated analyzes to face the competition.
Nowadays, a better understanding of the functioning of economic and social systems is required, as well as greater capacities to formulate public policies and instruments of analysis that allow linking all these factors in an articulated way.
The new forms of competition impose the articulation of efforts between the public and private sectors. Foresight studies are a formidable tool, precisely because they represent a new and modern way of linking the actions of one and the other.
Finally, we refer that nowadays no one disputes the importance of innovation and technological change as an engine for the development of an economy, or the fact that they constitute the main element of change and progress. However, introducing them into the economy and society presupposes as an indispensable requirement the permanent renewal of social capacities and skills in the workforce. These capabilities not only demand new skills, but often make existing ones obsolete.
The economic and social pressures generated by the globalization of markets on peoples and entrepreneurs force the formulation of a new social contract between science, technology and society, which allows the construction of more just and equitable societies and, at the same time, more competitive.
The identification of trends in the technological field, the understanding of the functioning and evolution of the markets or the informed analysis of the competition policies are important benefits obtained by the foresight exercises. However, we must not forget those related to the discovery and connection with potential allies and commercial / industrial partners as well as the development of business strategies.
Among the general prospective methods, those that are based on consulting experts (Expert Methods) are called expert methods.
Expert methods use as a source of information a group of people who are supposed to have a high knowledge of the subject to be discussed. These methods are used when any of the following conditions exist:
- There is no historical data to work with. A typical case of this situation is the anticipation of the implementation of new technologies. The impact of external factors has more influence on the evolution than that of internal ones. Thus, the appearance of favorable and regulatory legislation and the support by some companies of certain technologies can cause a great development of these that otherwise would have been slower. Ethical or moral considerations dominate over economic and technological considerations in a evolutionary process. In this case, a technology may see its development hampered if it causes a high rejection in society (we have an example in genetic technology, which is hindered by its progress due to the moral problems implied by the possibility of manipulating the genotype).
Prospective and management
Without plans, management cannot know how to organize its people and other resources; they may not even have a clear idea of what they need to organize. Without a plan, they cannot confidently lead or expect others to follow. And without a plan, managers and their followers have very little chance of achieving their goals or knowing when and where they are deviating from their path.
Control becomes a trivial exercise. Bad plans often affect the health of the entire organization. This is why the business press (The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and others) devote so much attention to organizational strategies, to the plans that top managers make to meet the overall goals of an organization. Its readers are stakeholders who use this information to judge the current performance of the organization and its chances of future success.
Bibliography
- Javier Medina and Edgar Ortegón (2006). “Manual of Prospective and Strategic Decision: Theoretical Bases and Instruments for Latin America and the Caribbean» CEPALBas, Enric (2002) Prospective: how to use thinking about the future Tomás Micklos (2004) Prospective Planning Edit.Lumusa
