The Impact of Strategic Foresight on Innovation: A Systematic Literature Review

The need to achieve better results through innovation has led firms to incorporate strategic or corporate foresight to anticipate and act agilely in highly complex, hyperconnected, and uncertain environments. However, current research on the intersection between strategic foresight and innovation is inconsistent and lacks an understanding of how this relationship occurs. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to reveal the empirical evidence on the impact of strategic foresight on innovation. A systematic literature review of a sample consisting of 46 articles published in journals indexed in Scopus and the Web of Science between 2011 and 2024 was conducted. The synthesis was based on a conceptual framework that combined the different roles of strategic foresight in innovation and the factors that interact with this relationship, such as organizational learning, organizational culture, organizational structure, and innovative behavior. The results indicated that there is an effort to demonstrate how corporate foresight creates value and favorably impacts innovation. However, empirical research is not only limited but mostly qualitative. This article contributes to the body of knowledge by providing a synthesis and discussion of what has been explored, learned, developed, and demonstrated in the literature. Furthermore, future research directions are proposed.