TY - JOUR A1 - Pace, Lisa A. A1 - Bruno, Carmen A1 - Schwarz, Jan Oliver T1 - Personas in scenario building: Integrating human-centred design methods in foresight JF - Futures N2 - This paper contributes to integrating human-centred design approaches in foresight. We emphasize design thinking as an approach that incorporates user-centred concepts and artefacts, enabling the creation and visualization of potential futures and mediating the exploration of new perspectives and areas of intervention for innovation. However, there is limited discussion in the foresight literature on the meaningful application of design approaches. We focus on the persona method and its roles and applications in scenario building. To be meaningful in scenario building, personas need to appropriately integrate users’ future needs, expectations and behaviours that shape and in turn are shaped by contexts that are yet to be realised. Based on an analysis of published case studies, the paper underscores the role of personas in fostering creative imagination, enhancing scenario engagement, and prospective sensemaking beyond their application as a storytelling vehicle in scenarios. We link persona characteristics and design to their roles in scenario building, allowing design and foresight practitioners the flexibility to tailor the persona approach to different contexts and critically assess the underlying limitations. From this, we provide recommendations for incorporating personas in scenario building and conclude with suggestions for future research. UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103539 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103539 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-57730 SN - 1873-6378 VL - 2025 IS - 166 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarz, Jan Oliver A1 - Schropp, Theresa Constanze A1 - Wach, Bernhard A1 - Buder, Fabian T1 - Do internal foresight activities add value to decision-making? Insights from an empirical investigation JF - Futures N2 - In a large empirical investigation of 400 managers in large U.S. and European corporations, we shed light on the effects of internal strategic foresight activities for decision-making, asking whether and how firms’ internal foresight activities add value to their decision-making. Enabling and supporting strategy conversations is conceptualized here as a central activity of strategic foresight. Our empirical investigation demonstrates that internal foresight activities have a significant and positive effect on strategy conversations within a firm. Against the assumptions of previous research, however, we cannot confirm the positive influence of strategy conversations in general on challenging the status quo in a firm or the overall helpfulness of strategic foresight activities in the context of decision-making. Future research should delve deeper into organizational studies to gain a more nuanced understanding of the processes and factors influencing future-oriented decision-making, as well as identifying key enablers that facilitate these decisions. UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103548 Y1 - 2025 UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2025.103548 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-57703 SN - 0016-3287 VL - 2025 IS - 166 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dörr, Ulrike-Sabine A1 - Schönhofer, Gerhard A1 - Schwarz, Jan Oliver T1 - The state of foresight in small and medium enterprises: literature review and research agenda JF - European Journal of Futures Research N2 - AbstractSmall and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of many economies. In today's world of VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity), SMEs face diverse challenges to survive and stay competitive. SMEs must prepare themselves for these challenges by practicing foresight. However, foresight, and especially corporate foresight, has been conceptualized and researched in the context of large corporations. Applying foresight in SMEs is therefore complicated by the question of how to implement foresight in the context of SMEs given their specific requirements and limitations. This article provides an overview on the literature on the application of foresight in SMEs is, along with a summary of the extent to which SMEs conduct foresight from an organizational and individual perspective. Besides offering a compendium on the state of foresight in SMEs, a research agenda is formulated, incorporating the idea of a toolbox tailored to SMEs based on existing approaches and prior works. UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s40309-024-00237-1 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s40309-024-00237-1 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-50522 SN - 2195-2248 VL - 12 IS - 1 PB - SpringerOpen CY - Heidelberg ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schwarz, Jan Oliver A1 - Wach, Bernhard A1 - Rohrbeck, René T1 - How to anchor design thinking in the future: Empirical evidence on the usage of strategic foresight in design thinking projects JF - Futures N2 - Many organizations use design thinking (DT) to develop future products and services. DT is often used for its ability to serve as a common “language” and platform to enable market-facing departments and technology-oriented units to cocreate innovations. DT has been shown to be a powerful tool for helping to identify and connect the needs of average customers (personas) with technical solutions that form the basis for winning products. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which DT professionals already use strategic foresight (SF) methods that anticipate future customer needs and highlight emerging technologies to expand classical DT and anchor their projects in the future. Using survey data on 302 DT projects, we report on the extent to which SF methods are used in DT projects, the overriding types of SF methods in DT projects, and their impact on project success. UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103137 KW - Design thinking KW - Strategic foresight KW - Trends KW - Scenarios KW - Science fiction Y1 - 2023 UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2023.103137 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-36135 SN - 1873-6378 VL - 2023 IS - 149 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Wach, Bernhard A1 - Schwarz, Jan Oliver A1 - von Held, Felix T1 - Corporate foresight for the benefit of corporates' innovation climate JF - Futures & Foresight Science N2 - Corporate foresight (CF) can be considered a future‐oriented capability that incorporates perceiving and prospecting. Extant CF‐related studies tackle the CF−innovation relationship but do not provide details on how CF relates to innovation climate. As we assume that the innovation climate of companies is a relevant antecedent to innovation, we conduct a quantitative empirical study with 147 upper‐tier managers to investigate how CF and the respective training of managers relate to a corporate's innovation climate. Results show that strong perceiving and prospecting positively influence the innovation climate, whereby prospecting is of particular importance. Further, we find that training managers in future‐oriented capabilities is only under certain circumstances (i.e., low prospecting) beneficial to the innovation climate in companies. UR - https://doi.org/10.1002/ffo2.195 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://doi.org/10.1002/ffo2.195 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-51201 SN - 2573-5152 VL - 7 IS - 1 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schropp, Theresa Constanze A1 - Schwarz, Jan Oliver A1 - Buder, Fabian T1 - Corporate foresight in light of the COVID‐19 pandemic—The crisis as a driver? JF - Futures & Foresight Science N2 - AbstractOur study emphasizes the evolving nature and increasing relevance of corporate foresight (CF) in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. This research, therefore, contributes to the foresight literature, concerned with the antecedents and motivators of CF as it investigates how external events that are characterized by great uncertainty influence the CF practice of large companies. On the example of the COVID‐19 pandemic and based on a study of 25 interviews, this empirical research reveals that such events provoke an intensified engagement with the future within companies as implied by a greater resource commitment and interest in foresight. Thereby, CF and especially the development of multiple future scenarios, are considered helpful in countering uncertainty and facilitating responsiveness. UR - https://doi.org/10.1002/ffo2.178 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://doi.org/10.1002/ffo2.178 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-45121 SN - 2573-5152 VL - 6 IS - 2 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schönhofer, Gerhard A1 - Komonen, Pauli A1 - Schwarz, Jan Oliver A1 - Bechthold, Laura T1 - Futures of Everyday Life: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Future Personas in Scenarios JF - Futures & Foresight Science N2 - Scenario reports, holding a long‐standing tradition in foresight and futures studies, act as an essential document for organizations to prepare for possible, plausible, and alternative futures. Focusing on descriptions and representations of everyday life, we examined 29 future persona narratives from six publications—covering a wide field from public to private sector—through qualitative content analysis. Our guiding question is: How can anthropological perspectives such as cultural relativism or postcolonial discourses contribute to an in‐depth, qualitative interpretation depictions of future everyday life? Acknowledging anthropology's colonial origins and its growing commitment to the interests of indigenous and other marginalized groups, we offer alternative readings of prominent scenario reports. Our findings suggest that scenario reports, in addition to anticipating possible futures, construct certain futures based on a systematic analysis of empirical data but also speculative interpretation. The results of these interpretative acts often appear elitist, stereotypical, and technocratic, often replicating dominant societal narratives rather than fostering substantive shifts in how the future is imagined. We therefore call for a more polyphonic representation of futures in scenario writing and foresight work that can produce more discontinuous and transformative images of the future. We understand polyphonic representations as coined by various independent, predominant as well as subaltern perspectives on the same issue at stake while being offered the same amount of space. Therefore, as we will indicate in our analysis, most of the reports referred to are rather monophonic and do not offer discuptive perspectives on the future of everyday life. As an avenue of methodological development, we propose a more nuanced and comprehensive perception of culture and social structures in scenario narrative writing. In addition, ethnographic methods could increase our understanding of how futures are collaboratively constructed and produced by different actors and their respective backgrounds and knowledge in scenario processes. UR - https://doi.org/10.1002/ffo2.70030 Y1 - 2026 UR - https://doi.org/10.1002/ffo2.70030 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-66024 SN - 2573-5152 VL - 8 IS - 1 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Bechthold, Laura A1 - Rosendahl Huber, Laura A1 - Eddleston, Kimberly A. T1 - Debiasing entrepreneurial careers: A field experiment on female role model effects on entrepreneurial self-efficacy and early-stage career choices JF - Journal of Business Venturing N2 - Women remain underrepresented not only as founders but also as employees – or “joiners” – in young and small firms, limiting their exposure to entrepreneurial environments that often serve as critical pathways to venture creation. To address this gap, we investigate whether introducing female entrepreneur role models in educational settings can shape young women's entrepreneurial self-efficacy and early career choices. Drawing on role congruity theory and social cognitive career theory (SCCT), we conducted a field experiment involving over 430 university students and 98 early-stage entrepreneurs. Using a pre-test/post-test design and longitudinal tracking of early career choices, we explore the causal effects of exogenously assigned female role models on students' decisions to join a young or small firm. We find that exposure to social interactions with female entrepreneurs significantly boosts female students' entrepreneurial self-efficacy. More importantly, women who were paired with a female entrepreneur were over 10% more likely to join a young firm after graduation compared to those assigned to a male entrepreneur. Mediation analysis confirms that entrepreneurial self-efficacy is a key mechanism linking exposure to same-sex role models with women's decision to join a young firm. These findings highlight the potential of targeted role model interventions to reduce gender disparities in entrepreneurial entry pathways and expand the diversity of entrepreneurial ecosystems. UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2026.106582 Y1 - 2026 UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2026.106582 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-66745 SN - 1873-2003 SN - 0883-9026 VL - 41 IS - 3 PB - Elsevier CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Schimpf, Sven A1 - Lauster, Michael A1 - Schwarz, Jan Oliver A1 - John, Marcus T1 - Science fiction and innovation: A literature analysis on science fiction-related methods mapped into the innovation process JF - Futures N2 - In the development of innovations over the past decades, data-driven methods have become commonplace. Alongside advantages in effectiveness and efficiency comes the danger of relying on data describing past rather than future developments which can result in a loss of imagination and creativity. In parallel, a growing awareness of the interface between innovation and science fiction can be observed in academia and among practitioners. This awareness is most often based on the hypothesis that taking inspiration from science fiction can create value in the development of innovations. Despite numerous case studies in the literature describing this interface, a major part of methods applied seem to have been chosen in an unstructured, almost random way. This study investigates the literature in search of science fiction-related methods able to support the development of innovations. With around 60.000 publications considered based on a high-level search, a refined search combined with a manual search led to 17 science fiction-related methods to support the development of innovations. Using a six-phase generic innovation process, the methods identified were mapped into the process based on semantic similarities between the objectives of each method and the objectives of innovation process phases. This mapping is understood as an overview and conceptualization offering a baseline for future academic research and guidance for practitioners on choosing the most appropriate science fiction-related methods for developing innovations. UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2026.103770 Y1 - 2026 UR - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.futures.2026.103770 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-66648 SN - 1873-6378 VL - 2026 IS - 177 PB - Elsevier CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Martini, Melanie A1 - Tietze, Frank A1 - John, Marcus A1 - Aristodemou, Leonidas A1 - Schönmann, Alexander A1 - Schimpf, Sven T1 - Conceptualizing disruptive innovation paths, patent zero and patent-data based operationalization JF - Centre for Technology Management working paper series N2 - Disruptive innovations, as opposed to sustaining innovations, bring change to customers, markets, industries. This change is often quite sudden and drastic. Thus, the early identification of disruptive technologies can be crucial for managers and policy makers alike. In this work we propose a method to support the early identification of disruptive innovations. To do so we conceptualize a 5-phase pathway framework for disruptive innovation, then propose how to operationalize its phases using patent data. We combined the underlying theory by Christensen with different patent indicators from literature to develop an early warning system for disruptive innovations based on the underlying disruptive technologies. Additionally, we introduce the concept of patent zero and provide a first analysis. UR - https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.111428 Y1 - 2024 UR - https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.111428 UR - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:573-50369 SN - 2058-8887 VL - 2024 IS - 5 PB - University of Cambridge CY - Cambridge ER -