Glossary A-D

A

Analytical hierachy process (AHP)
The analytical hierarchy process is a method of decision support, aligning criteria through a hierarchical structure. Hence, a given objective is structured by criteria on the highest level, successively, this criteria is structured by criteria on the second level, etc. AHP was developed by Thomas Saaty in 1980 and is increasingly applied in the USA, Scandinavia, Austria and Switzerland since the nineties.

B

Balanced Scorecard / Strategy Map
The balanced scorecard represents the key objectives of a company and names the important business figures, which measure the achievement of the given objectives. These figures include the traditional financial perspective as well as a customer perspective, a process perspective and a development perspective. A strategy map combines and visualises the individual goals.

Biometrics / Bionics
Biometrics or bionics use biological structures and forms of organisations directly as a model or they are abstracted, in order to find ideas.

Bisociation
Bisociation is the connection of terms, images and imaginations of several areas and, hence, conceived as a bursting of mental routines.

Brainstorming
Brainstorming is the most famous intuitive creativity method. It was invented by Alex Osborn and further developed by Charles Clark and is aligned to the Indian "Prai-Barshana"-technique. The first step is the spontaneous mentioning of ideas, each member being allowed to name, copy and combine ideas. Furthermore, it is prohibited to criticise, reject or ridicule ideas. Within the second step the ideas are sorted and evaluated.

Brainwriting
Brainwriting is based on brainstorming, but every participant is collecting and writing down the ideas on his own. This offers more introverted people an easier integration into the idea-finding-process, but on the other hand, it also limits the positive interactive effects.

Business Cycles
Business cycles last about five years. The highest and lowest points are called "boom" and "ressession" respectively.

Business Mission Statement
The business mission statement is a dynamic future image which focusses on the orientation within a complex environment and the resulting demand for changes. Mission statements oftentimes result from processes of strategy development, concretising a former identified strategic direction or corporate vision. It is primarily built on "dynamic" elements such as a vision, strategic positioning and competencies as well as goals. It depends on the future business model, market conditions and competition.

Business Model
A business model (in terms of the procedure of scenario development) is the systematic development of possibilities concerning how an organisation could align within a certain business field.

Business Plan / Business Case
A business plan describes existing, extended and new business activities. When founding a company it can be differentiated among a basic business plan and a detailled, quantitative business plan. When describing existing, extended or new business activities the focus is put upon quantitative planning. Oftentimes the expression "Business Case" is used.

Business Principles
Business principles are commonly found in enterprises, where it is necessary to provide the general company orientation for a large number of employees. Main objectives are communication and differentiation and to reveal certain ideals. They are primarily based on static elements like the mission statement and values and is oriented at the business model, which can include the business as well as economic objectives.

Business system
A business system describes a conclusive combination of products, markets and business models. Hence, it is an enlargement of the traditional strategic positioning of companies and business divisions based on product-market-combinations.

C

Chart Analysis
The chart analysis (also: technical analysis) is a specific form of time series prediction, which was developed by the American Charles Dow, who wrote about it for the first time in 1884 in several articles in the Wall Street Journal. The chart analysis includes a large number of techniques to strive for a prediction of future exchange rates by analysing historical exchange rate developments. Primary goal is the identification of suitable points of time to buy or sell financial measures.

Competitive Competencies
These are the abilities which make up for the past and present success of a company or an organisation. For companies with long-term success these are the basis of core competencies.

Connected Thinking
The variety of business activities as well as the dynamics of process changes in the business environment have continuously increased. This conjunction of variety and dynamics is called complexity. Due to the increasing complexity many conventional mangement approaches fail, since they are based on a seperated observation of individual category groups. Hence, companies depend on considering the development and behaviour of connected and complex systems.

Consequence Analysis
Within a consequence analysis a transfer from the scenario field back to the decision field takes place. The analysis especially includes the deduction of opportunities, threats and options for action.

Crisis Management
Crisis management is dealing with thinking ahead and avoiding business crises on the one hand, and dealing with them on the other hand, once they have already occured. If the devlopment of organisation-wide skills for handling such troubles is at the core, it is referred to as continuity management.

Cross Impact Analysis
Interdependent scenarios are future images, that are based on a systematic connection of trend projections and its probabilities. Cross impact analyses are used for their development. This includes a group of methods, which try to analyse and evaluate the coherences between the probabilty of occurence of possible future developments.

Cycles and Waves
Cycles and waves work in principle as lifecycles, but there is no starting or end point. Instead, in the course of time a repetition of the positions of the observed objects occurs.

D

Decision Field
Existing strategies for the composition field/decision field are evaluated by scenarios and new strategies are developed.

Delphi Technique
The Delphi technique describes an anonymous feedback interview of experts concerning the future development of a certain subjet area. The expert knowledge is discussed and further explained in several interview rounds. When using feedback methods, the evaluated group opinions are made anonymous to be presented to and subsequently modified (if necessary) by the experts in order to get a basic assessment supported by a possibly large number of experts.

Development models
Development models describe basic developments of an area of interest- e.g. a technology, an industry or a community- through lifecurves or lifecycles. Such curves or cycles- as well as historical analogies- are used as future instruments, by anticipating development steps and hence enable a prediction.

Dual Strategies
Dual strategies combine specific options for action of several scenarios. These options have only little in common, and hence, implicate following very different roads.