Environmental Scanning Comeback? LO16327

Walter Derzko @ Idea Lab (@)
Sun, 21 Dec 1997 08:52:54 -0500

Are Environmental Scanning/ Issues management programs making a comeback
in large companies ? I used to work in this area in Ontario Hydro back in
the 1980's. It was a hot item right up until the recession hit and then
most companies that had started scanning programs chopped staff and
resources.Programs and departments were killed or outsourced.Others
dropped them after a "crisis" was over.

Two of the top firms in their industry groups in Canada have requested
proposals from us for such a program in the past two weeks.

The rational is simple and sound. If you have a 1000 people (read brains)
in your company, then why are you relying on only the top 5- 10 to spot or
create opportunites for you. This requires a formal opportunity spotting
mechanism to "mine your business environment for ideas". Intelligent
gobots on the net now compliment the manual scanning and searches.
Companies who used to have "sales people" who closed and made sales find
that these people are now obsolete due to electronic order systems. Your
former sales staff can now become your front line opportunity spotters.
Call centers could have similar roles.

Has anyone integrated Opportunity Scanning with their Stage /gate process?

What companies still have formal issues management programs in place? Have
programs been modernized since the 1980's ?

I'm interested in swapping war stories. Please reply to:
wderzko@pathcom.com.

Thanks in advance,

Walter Derzko
Director Idea Lab
wderzko@pathcom.com

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