Preparing for the Future -- How Managers Perceive, Interpret, and Assess the Impact of Digital Technologies for Business

This paper investigates how senior managers interpret and react to the strategic threats and opportunities presented by digital technologies. Strategy studies focus on one type of actor or organizational context. Instead, we considered various firms, roles and expertise. We conducted 20 hours of in-depth, elite interviews with 15 senior managers from client firms, digital marketing agencies and strategy consultants and identified several opportunities related to the data and how they are manipulated, the business uses of digital technologies and broad behavioral changes. However, data quality and quantity limit the value of data granularity and currency. Additionally, we found that the three types of interviewees produce strategy assessments that differ in terms of content, salience and valence. This finding advances the conceptual understanding of the impact of different roles and cognitive frameworks on strategy development and, thus, the need to incorporate the views of third parties in environmental scanning exercises.