Track: Entrepreneurship and Innovation

Abstract

Early consideration of the future market environment of a new product favors its success. Therefore, the future environment and requirements derived from this must be considered in the development of a product. Foresight provides several instruments for identifying different potential future developments, according to the time horizon referenced in the development of the product. Especially for a medium to long-term time horizon, trends and scenarios are suitable. With scenarios, alternative environments of the future can be described and distinguished. In strategic product planning, future requirements are derived with the help of scenarios to enable a more efficient and often less expensive definition for a product. Due to a volatile market environment, the product must be adapted in many cases or fails to meet the future needs of customers, users or suppliers. There are several approaches to manage this uncertainty. However, there is a lack of an overview of common understandings.

In this paper, 29 relevant publications were identified with a systematic literature review considering 382 publications. Six existing understandings were identified but they are not used consistently. Based on the commonalities, two key orientations were found: future-robustness and future-orientation. With future-robustness, developments can be understood which results in products positioned robustly against several alternative futures. The products can be adapted to different future developments with minor adjustments. In contrast, with future-orientation the development is focused on a specific alternative future and thus the product design is made for one chosen solution concept. Therefore, product changes are effortful.