Towards the Development of an Automated, Web-based, Horizon Scanning System

Horizon scanning is an increasingly important part of management decision making in all sectors. It involves the systematic search for incipient trends, opportunities and constraints that might affect the probability of achieving management goals and objectives. This requires the continuous acquisition of up-to-date information to anticipate issues, collect data about them and thus inform critical decisions. Although horizon scanning has its roots in the pre-electronic information era, it has blossomed with the availability of electronic databases and Web-based information. In this paper, we propose the implementation of a horizon scanning system centred on the use of keyword-based, Web search engines. By leveraging the existing infrastructure of proven search engines, our system aims to automate the human-intensive process of seeking information and emerging trends. A prototype application that integrates the software that we plan to use has been developed to accompany this paper, and we discuss the potential for its application.