Organizations use environmental scanning to monitor important events in their surrounding environment. It is a way to answer the question, "What's happening in my environment that will affect my future?" Scanning involves identifying the issues and trends that have important implications for the future. The scanning includes analysis of the information about these issues and trends to assess their importance and determine their implications for planning and strategic decision making.

A way to discover emerging trends of strategic importance. Scanning is different from ordinary information gathering in that it is concerned primarily with the future, emerging trends, and issues that have strategic importance for your organization.

A method for gathering information from variety of sources. It involves gathering information from publications, conferences, personal and organizational networks, experts and scholars, market research, and any source that appears to be useful. Organizations may have formal, continuous processes for environmental scanning, with a permanent unit of the organization responsible. Or the effort may be episodic and organized in an ad hoc manner.

Data analysis for planning purposes. Simply gathering the environmental data is insufficient. It is also necessary for you to interpret the data correctly and make it useful for planning and decision making.

Taking advantage of opportunities. Environmental scanning can help capitalize on emerging opportunities. It can be an important part of strategic planning by helping you shape strategy to better fit emerging conditions.

Anticipating developments to avoid costly mistakes. Scanning can also help avoid costly mistakes by helping planners and decision-makers anticipate change in the environment. This is particularly important in any planning that involves information technology, since the capabilities and costs of IT are evolving at a rapid pace.

Level of resources required. It's hard to judge the appropriate level of resources to devote to environmental scanning. Where environmental conditions are turbulent and full of potentially significant changes, large amounts of resources may be justified.

Interpretation an inexact science. More importantly, the interpretation of trend information and forecasting is an inexact science at best. The farther into the future a scan probes, the more careful you must be with the interpretation.

Abels, E. (2002) "Hot Topics: Environmental Scanning." Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 28 (3) 16-17.

Cornell University's Cooperative Extension has a list of resources pertaining to environmental scanning. http://www.cce.cornell.edu/admin/program/documents/scan.htm [Retrieved May 27, 2003]

Choo, C. W. (2001) "Environmental scanning as information seeking and organizational learning." Information Research, 7(1). Choo's article provides a detailed academic view of environmental scanning. http://informationr.net/ir/7-1/paper112.html [Retrieved May 27, 2003]

Mafrica, L. (2003) "From Scan to Plan: How to Apply Environmental Scanning to Your Association's Strategic Planning Process." Association Management 55, 42-47.