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Managing the Future—Six Guidelines for Designing Environmental Scanning Systems

  • Conference paper
Service-Oriented Perspectives in Design Science Research (DESRIST 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 6629))

Abstract

The 2008/2009 economic crisis provided a sustainable impulse for improving environmental scanning systems. Although a substantial body of knowledge exists, these concepts are not often used by practitioners. Based on a literature research, this article outlines six guidelines for designing environmental scanning systems that are more applicable than the state of the art. We incorporate these guidelines in a six-step method and focus on how the capabilities of "modern" information systems (IS) enable a better "grasp" of weak signals and a closer incorporation of the findings into the executives’ decision-making process. Applying this reworked method at a raw materials and engineering company leads to a first instantiation—the "Corporate Radar." The version discussed here ends with a value-driver tree showing economic value added at risk on top. The resulting lessons learned helped us in two ways: providing concrete starting points for future research and arguing for the research method presented here.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Information Management, University of St.Gallen, Mueller-Friedberg-Straße 8, 9000, St. Gallen, Switzerland

    Jörg H. Mayer

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  1. Jörg H. Mayer
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Sheldon B. Lubar School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 3202 N. Maryland Avenue, 53201-0742, Milwaukee, WI, USA

    Hemant Jain  & Atish P. Sinha  & 

  2. Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University, 721 University Avenue, 13244-2450, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Padmal Vitharana

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Mayer, J.H. (2011). Managing the Future—Six Guidelines for Designing Environmental Scanning Systems. In: Jain, H., Sinha, A.P., Vitharana, P. (eds) Service-Oriented Perspectives in Design Science Research. DESRIST 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6629. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20633-7_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-20633-7_20

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-20632-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-20633-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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