An organizational futurist role for integrating foresight into corporations

Integrating foresight into corporations has proved to be challenging and rare. The paper proposes an organizational futurist role as an internal champion and broker to facilitate the integration process. It builds on the direct experience of one of the authors in crafting the role by revisiting and critically reviewing the papers reporting on findings from that experience. A literature review is then used to reflect on the gaps identified and to stimulate new conceptualizations in order to ground the role in a more suitable academic approach. The paper proposes several tangible approaches for how an organizational futurist role might respond to three principal challenges to the integration of foresight identified and confirmed by a review of the literature. The paper concludes with a research agenda to explore those approaches. •Describes why integrating foresight into corporations has been challenging•Reviews and critiques previous work on organizational futurist role•Proposes an organizational futurist role to facilitate integration•Offers new conceptualizations of the organizational futurist role•Proposes research agenda to enhance the organizational futurist role