Technology and innovation driven organisations need new paradigms of strategic thinking in rapidly changing and competitive markets. To support the corporate strategy, a carefully developed technology and innovation strategy is required.

This strategy is very dependent on emerging and disruptive technologies, the behaviour of people in the marketplace and inside the organisation and events that influence future business. Strategic planning is undergoing a metamorphosis in the increasingly complex world where the rate of change is enormous and where decision making is based on emergence and sense making rather than analysis and complete understanding. Often, technology and innovation strategy is guided by business model innovation where value-adding has to be shaped and oriented to fast evolving areas of the market.

Technology life cycles are becoming shorter and the requirements for innovative solutions drive value appreciation in the marketplace. Embedding knowledge deep into intelligent products have become the norm of a knowledge economy. The main research question for the theme is: How can strategies for organisations and industries be developed in order to ensure optimal and sustainable organisational performance in the future?

• How should organisations think about the future and what should their visions be?
• What intelligence needs to be done to assess the internal and external environments?
• How should strategic selection and portfolio development be done?
• How should technology, innovation, and business strategies be aligned?
• How should the paths to the future be mapped?
• What are the new business models that should be aligned with future strategies?
• What will the socio-economic impact of the strategies be?
• What new methods and tools should be developed to assist organisations in their strategy development and implementation processes?

Beyond strategy lies the future. The future is not predictable, but at the same time it is not predetermined. This research team uses future thinking to open the way for effective strategic planning. Future thinking encompasses many of the existing techniques and processes to estimate a future and develops new philosophies and executive outlook towards strategic thinking.

Study Leader