Building Hyper-Awareness: How to Amplify Weak External Signals for Improved Strategic Agility

What is it about?

Early detection of weak external signals is increasingly critical for strategic agility. While many organizations scan for weak signals, most dismiss them as anomalies, principally due to poor amplification strategies. Several challenges hinder the necessary amplification and sensemaking of weak signals for organizational awareness. This article analyzes 139 proof-of-concept projects with startups and 15 interviews with executives involved in the projects at a leading German mobility corporation, and it reveals four actions to amplify weak external signals, thereby enhancing organizational hyper-awareness. It illustrates the actions with examples and presents the implications for both weak signals and strategic agility management.

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Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash

Photo by NASA Hubble Space Telescope on Unsplash

Why is it important?

------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Academic Scholarship ------------------------------------------------------- Weak signal amplification has been predominantly cognition-based. In contrast, we present an action-oriented approach to weak signal amplification. Our four-fold amplification actions model helps improve strategic sensitivity and hyperawareness of weak signals within organizations. Our findings advance the literatures on weak signals and strategic agility. ------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Management Practice ------------------------------------------------------- Organizations are increasingly facing uncertainties and thereby investing in strategic agility. While many organizations have scanning mechanisms for weak signals, sensemaking of these weak signals remains a challenge. We address this by providing practitioners with a 4-E action-oriented framework that will help them amplify weak signals to make better sense of them. ---------------------------- Author Perspective ---------------------------- All three authors are equally drawn to the topic of practicing entrepreneurship within organizations. To practice corporate entrepreneurship, strategic agility remains an essential capability. Despite organizational efforts to build weak signal scanning functions, we discovered that many ignored important weak signals. To our surprise, we noticed that amplification remained underexplored. This drew us to study weak signal amplification. We hope to continue learning and contributing more to the literatures on weak signal amplification and strategic agility.