Weak Signals for Strategic Intelligence: Anticipation Tool for Managers

Glossary

Act: refers to a manifestation of will, action, or behavior: a choice, a decision, a declaration, a gesture, etc.

Actionable knowledge: refers to knowledge that can be used to act. It can take on various forms, for example: a procedure, a method, an algorithm [ARG 96].

“Adjacent” information: refers to two information items that relate to the same topic, but have few or no words in common (despite being written in the same language).

Amplification: refers to the operation whose goal is to make more visible and meaningful a weak signal that is difficult to perceive.

Animation/animator: refers to the person tasked with running the strategic scanning process, “bringing it to life” and making it endure [KRI 10]. Animator inaptitude is a factor of abandonment of strategic scanning [LES 08b, LES 08c].

Anticipate/anticipation: refers to the process of imagining the sequences of possible consequences of an event that has been announced or barely started, and taking action before those consequences are realized, in order to influence their progress, take advantage of them or, alternatively, guard against them:

– putting ourselves in a position to pick up signals that we will interpret as being possible harbingers of a danger (or of a good opportunity), in order to prepare to act quickly and at the right time;

– creating the conditions or circumstances that will make it possible to act quickly and at the right time.

Anticipative information: refers to an information item, the interpretation ...