Environmental Scanning

"Environmental scanning begins with gathering information about the external environment. This information can be obtained from various sources, both internal and external to the organization."

"In a sense, environmental scanning is the visual and perception system that feeds information about the outside world to the strategic planning and management functions that constitute the brain of the organization."

General Tools

• Scout Report from Internic. Essential.

About Environmental Scanning

• "Anticipatory Managements Tools for the 21st Century," originally published in the Futures Research Quarterly, Summer 1996.
• Choo, Chun Wei and Ethel Auster. "Environmental Scanning: Acquisition and Use of Information by Managers," in Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 1993, p. 279-314.
• Environmental Scanning in Action, chapter 5 of something called, "Information Management for the Intelligent Organization."
• Futures Research and the Strategic Planning Process: Implications for Higher Education, the fulltext of a 1984 ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Research Report.
• On the Horizon. "In 1992, James L. Morrison founded the print publication On the Horizon, which informs educational leaders of the implications of change in the external world and provides recommendations for action to address these implications." You still have to pay for OTH but this very useful website has a lot of free stuff too. The Workshops and Seminars page is invaluable.