Effectuation and foresight – An exploratory study of the implicit links between the two concepts

Abstract

The concept of effectuation as known in the literature on entrepreneurship aims to explain how entrepreneurs build projects in situations of high uncertainty. In the effectual process, entrepreneurs reject any attempt to predict or forecast the future which would allow them to define their new ventures. Instead, they concentrate on building the future through their action and interaction with the different actors in their environment. The same attitude towards the future can be found in the literature on foresight. However, until now, these two concepts have not been brought together. The proposed paper is based on an exploratory study. Through a review of the literature on both effectuation and foresight, we aim to shed some light on the implicit links between the two concepts: cognition and networks. In addition, through a series of semi-conducted interviews with both entrepreneurs and some leading figures from the field of foresight, we explore this relationship more deeply. The results from the interviews suggest new approaches that could further strengthen the relationship between effectuation and foresight. This study opens a number of new perspectives for building foresight approaches that would be more adapted for entrepreneurs, notably in the initial stages of the development of their projects, as well as some possibilities for possible future research developments.