The Scanning Process
This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the process of environmental scanning. It goes in depth by describing different methods used in environmental scanning.
Scanning methods
Different organizations use a variety of ways to encourage strategic thinking through serendipitous discovery. Their intent is to engage people in continuous thinking about potential future issues, uncover previously unseen opportunities and risks, and determine their implications for the organization. Here are some common methods used by our clients:
Automated scanning: In recent years Internet improvements have made it possible to track emerging change from pre-selected sources e.g. competitors, favorite people, and websites, and other stakeholders through automated and semi-automated scanning. This method has cut finding highly relevant Insights to one tenth of the time, reduced human error, and cut scanning costs significantly.
Bookmarking, RSS feeds, auto-linking to Twitter, Facebook, MentionMap, Paper.li, and LinkedIn as well as scanning robots all provide fast addition of Insights.