background preloader

Scanning

Facebook Twitter

Environmental Scanning in the digital age. Environmental scanning is a process for monitoring an organization’s internal and external environments for clues to change that could mean new threats and opportunities.

Environmental Scanning in the digital age

It is a different process than it was 10 or 20 years ago. The old approaches were often troublesome, narrow, weak, and too complex. They did little to foster a culture of foresight in the organization. They were usually limited to a small group of people and a periodic process—the strategic planning team and its every-few-year cycle. We are lucky now to have a broad set of tools we can use to enable, enliven, and energize scanning. I’ve put a NASCAR picture here (Image: PocketWiley, via Flickr) because it is a great example for me of reaching beyond my usual experience and interest. So my advice in sum: go somewhere new, do something new, talk to someone new. That’s the spirit of good environmental scanning and it’s a habit you need for successful foresight.

What is environmental scanning? It has been: It can become: The 10 Tech Terms to Know in 2013. Cognitive Radio The airways are getting crowded, thanks to smartphone and tablet data transmission that doubles every year.

The 10 Tech Terms to Know in 2013

One solution: cognitive radio devices, whose signals automatically jump back and forth between frequencies in a fraction of a second to find open spectrum. A prototype developed at Rutgers University can switch to a new frequency in less than 50 microseconds while sending eight times the data of a typical home wireless system, taking advantage of openings on the AM and FM radio, TV, and cellular frequency bands. And Florida-based xG Technology has already set up a demo network in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., that uses cognitive radio for mobile broadband and VoIP links. Crucially, the FCC announced in September a pending rule change that will pave the way for spectrum-sharing technologies such as cognitive radio to use previously restricted frequencies. Need extreme ideas? Talk to extreme consumers. Brian Millar is Strategy Director at strategy agency Sense Worldwide.

Need extreme ideas? Talk to extreme consumers

He works with companies like Nike, Vodafone, and SC Johnson to transform their global businesses. You can follow him on Twitter on @arthurascii "The loft is booked all day Tuesday for the dominatrices, and we'll give it a deep clean on Thursday night because we have obsessive compulsives in to do toilet brushes on Friday. " "How are the developing world hackers doing?

" "The Cameroonians are great and we've got loads in Lebanon, but they're not talking online. The conversations that I hear floating around at Sense Worldwide are almost as surreal as the space where they happen: an ever-changing shanty town of polyboards, Post-It notes and photographs over three floors in London's Soho. I worked in advertising for fifteen years, and in that time research was always the enemy of a big, new idea.

Escape from the wind tunnel But in each case, a small group of open-minded creative individuals loved a product. 100 Websites You Should Know and Use. In the spring of 2007, Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH, gave a legendary TED University talk: an ultra-fast-moving ride through the “100 websites you should know and use.”

100 Websites You Should Know and Use

Six years later, it remains one of the most viewed TED blog posts ever. Time for an update? We think so. Below, the 2013 edition of the 100 websites to put on your radar and in your browser. To see the original list, click here. And now, the original list from 2007, created by Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH.