What is Strategic Scanning?

A foresight view - which in our case takes a time horizon of 10-20 years out from the present - needs to look at even weaker signals of change than conventional environmental scanning does; signals which, by their nature, are often very far from "mainstream" thinking. Also, because it takes the University as a whole organisation as its focus of interest - using the University's broad strategic themes as touchstones, rather than specific, individual subject areas - the scanning must necessarily be much broader in scope, and much longer in time-frame, than any such special-interest or more narrowly targeted scanning would ever be designed to be. And we have done it like this for a reason...

The role of strategic scanning in FPR is actually that of "blind-spot scanning", looking at things that other scanning may not; looking more broadly than other scanning may attempt; and looking for much weaker signals than other scanning might bother with.

This is why FPR's scanning work has sometimes be considered a little bit "out there" - which is exactly how it should appear, if it is to be of value in expanding perceptions of how the longer-term future could unfold! It is also why FPR's scanning has sometimes been criticised for being "too broad" - which really means that different people have viewed it with their own more narrowly-defined special interests in mind, and found that it doesn't cover their particular special interests "well enough" in their opinion. Well, it's not meant to. Judging it on that basis is like trying to compare apples and oranges. The job of FPR's strategic intelligence scanning is to look at things which others don't or won't look at. Our job is to focus on the University organisation level; we take the strategic themes as our ambit - as mentioned above - and judge the scanning hits in part on that basis, with a 10-20 year timeframe for potential impacts and relevance.