Corporate foresight and its impact on firm performance: A longitudinal analysis

Corporate foresight is applied with the expectation that it will help firms to break away from path dependency, help decision makers to define superior courses of action, and ultimately enable superior firm performance. To empirically test this assumption, we developed a model that judges a firm's future preparedness (FP) by assessing the need for corporate foresight (CF) and comparing it to the maturity of its CF practices. We apply a longitudinal research design in which we measure future preparedness in 2008 and its impact on firm performance in 2015. The results indicated future preparedness to be a powerful predictor for becoming an outperformer in the industry, for attaining superior profitability, and for gaining superior market capitalization growth. In the article, we also calculate the average bonus/discount that can be expected by sufficiently/insufficiently future-prepared firms. •We developed a model for assessing the future preparedness (FP) of a firm•We match FP data from 2008 and performance in 2015•Future-prepared firms outperformed the average by a 33% higher profitability•Future-prepared firms outperform the average by a 200% higher growth•Firms with deficiencies face with a performance discount of 37% to 108%.