Using a meeting room system to improve targeting of Strategic Scanning

In order to be efficient and provide useful results, Strategic Scanning activities must be targeted to the part of the business environment that corresponds to organizations' strategic objectives and priorities. However there is a lack of systems to help managers target their information needs for strategic scanning. Following an action research approach, this paper presents the results of the use of a meeting room system to help managers target Strategic Scanning. The system implemented is an adaptation of the “Target” method. It was evaluated in real Face-to-Face scenarios with 27 managers in 10 organizations interested in Strategic Scanning for Sustainable Supply Chains. While this research was exploratory, results already suggest that the system can be added to the catalog of tools for Strategic Scanning. Learning from the use and development of the system lead to propose evolutions to Target method.