On the Role of Intelligence and Business Wargaming in Developing Foresight

TL;DR

This paper explores how intelligence enhances business wargaming to improve strategic foresight, demonstrating its role in transforming data into actionable intelligence and supporting strategic development.

Contribution

It introduces a framework linking intelligence cycles with business wargaming, highlighting its role in strategy testing and development, supported by practical case studies.

Findings

Business wargaming supports the intelligence cycle in data transformation.

It bridges business intelligence and competitive intelligence.

Wargaming aids in testing and developing company strategies.

Abstract

Business wargaming is a central tool for developing sustaining strategies. It transfers the benefits of traditional wargaming to the business environment. However, building wargames that support the process of decision-making for strategy require respective intelligence. This paper investigates the role of intelligence in the process of developing strategic foresight. The focus is on how intelligence is developed and how it relates to business wargaming. The so-called intelligence cycle is the basis and reference of our investigation. The conceptual part of the paper combines the theoretical background from military, business as well as serious gaming. To elaborate on some of the lessons learned, we examine specific business wargames both drawn from the literature and conducted by us at the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies (CISS). It is shown that business wargaming can make a significant contribution to the transformation of data to intelligence by supporting the intelligence cycle in two crucial phases. Furthermore, it brings together business intelligence (BI) and competitive intelligence (CI) and it bridges the gap to a company's strategy by either testing or developing a new strategy. We were also able to confirm this finding based on the business wargame we conducted at a major semiconductor manufacturer.