Learning through foresight

Purpose - This paper aims to investigate how and why foresight may affect individual and organizational learning. Design/methodology/approach - This paper builds on prior research through a qualitative study with 13 foresight practitioners. Findings - This paper derives four broad foresight capabilities that are underpinned by a number of interdependent factors and relates those to the wider literature on individual and organizational learning. Practical implications - Practitioners may use this paper's findings to enhance any individual and organizational learning effects of foresight activities. Deriving four broad foresight capabilities via a range of interdependent factors may assist practitioners with evaluating and/or enhancing the effectiveness of these capabilities in an organized fashion. Additionally, the findings show that foresight mode, with its strong relationship to foresight-related accountabilities and incentives, plays a central role in all four foresight capabilities. This stresses the importance of having a continuous foresight capability with strong top management commitment, effective governance and clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Originality/value - This paper makes a number of theoretical contributions. First, it contributes toward further operationalizing foresight. Second, it demonstrates a substantial overlap between the concepts of foresight and absorptive capacity, which suggests that foresight scholars and practitioners may benefit from a large and mature related body of literature. Third, it identifies explicit links between specific foresight and individual/organizational learning constructs.