Table 2 Top interview responses for methods
Codes/subthemes | N | Example Responses |
|---|---|---|
External experts | 22 | Outside consultants conduct primary research and develop trends; moving company from understanding future to actually making investment decisions; serve department-specific needs. |
Scenario | 17 | “Creating Leading Questions” to identify key topics; Deductive Scenarios for strategy; Inductive Scenarios for research; develop story describing future based on identified signals of change. |
Trends | 15 | Trends Monitoring (or scouting) to understand developments in macro-environment; Big-Trends: clusters of smaller trends (5–10) with significance; Trend Analysis projects only 2–3 years. |
Scanning | 9 | Looking for signals of change (new developments, directional, trends, and discontinuity on the horizon). |
STEEP | 9 | Gauging external environments; VSTEEP: STEEP factors -emergent activities across the factors become a Big-Trend. |
Workshop | 6 | Facilitate ideation (internal for discovery or presentation); or innovation: held in various locales/customer sites around globe. |