Future-oriented innovations include progressive products, firms and technologies which can enhance the lives of individuals. They can improve sectors like healthcare and space technology, or increase a business’s competitiveness. Producing them requires lots of work from diverse high tech technique stakeholders that can result in a paradigm shift and major epistemic visibility. It is vital that the leadership and staff of the company are open to learning from long-term trends and taking note of them.
The most common barriers to fostering forward-looking innovation are fear of the unknown or change, and the focus on short-term gain. In the workplace, these issues can be overcome by encouraging an attitude of growth, encouraging an environment of innovation, and creating a sense of an end-to-end goal for employees to pursue. This is commonly described as phronesis which means that individuals must have the motivation to make difficult decisions in their work and could result in higher employee preservation rates for businesses that are geared towards the future.
There is increasing evidence that innovation ecosystems could benefit from a greater understanding of future possibilities. This could be achieved by integrating foresight within innovation ecosystems, extending structural ties between strategy-building processes and research programs, and increasing awareness of possible future options through dialog. The foresight wheel model provides an approach to methodological development that can respond to these needs in a way that is both efficient and scalable. This article describes a new approach to develop future-oriented innovation.