The Modern Business World

In today's business world, one has to be anticipatory. Being anticipatory is the only way to gain advantage, just as Machiavelli pointed out in his writings The Prince. How an organization develops its anticipatory aptitude in order to gain strategic advantage is what separates the men from the boys in business today. In order to be anticipatory, a business must require sophisticated intelligence gathering techniques, new decision process models and accountability measures.

For a business in today's economy, failure to anticipate trends, events, technology changes and external shifts can be destructive. One need only point to the examples of US companies like IBM in the 1980's, who insisted on continuing to work with mainframes while the computer industry around them was changing and further to General Motors in the 1960's when they failed to anticipate the impact of an energy crises and Japanese imports. The 21st Century manager must anticipate these new information technologies and applications and anticipate their enhancement of the manager's ability to perform effectively in a new business environment. "Setting one's future agenda can only be done with sophisticated intelligence techniques, new models, and practical acc

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ginalized in the electronic commerce arena." (Daly) This is only one industry example showing an emerging trend that needs to be addressed. Those who take heed will be able to navigate the coming storms in the international banking industry. In order to do this they will have to scan and monitor processes. SCANNING AND MONITORING: So how does an organization identify events and trends, analyze and process them? They begin by scanning media. They then gather and begin processing the information into databases, models, files, and identify signals of change. By constant monitoring of the flow of information sourced regarding trends and events, these signals can be followed and forecasting can begin estimating the duration, direction, acceleration and amplitude. A signal can range from being a social shift, a technological advancement, an economic indicator, environmental shifts or even political events or movements. Some have even referred to these as the acronym STEEP. The reason these signals are important to identify is because trends and events often come together to form issues. These issues can be things like environmental protection, product liability even privacy. The internet becomes an important source of in
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Ashley Organizations, EMERGING ISSUES, SCANNING MONITORING, Machiavelli Prince, CHALLENGING ASSUMPTIONS, Ashley Morrison, VULNERABILITY AUDITS, , Inquiring Systems, Executive's Journal, trends events, information technology, business environment, 21st century, issue vulnerability, century manager, 21st century manager, emerging issues, issue vulnerability audits, sophisticated intelligence, intelligence gathering, vulnerability audits, tools 21st century,
Approximate Word count = 1564
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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