Strategic Issue Identification for Crowd Predictions

Successful decision making depends on the ability to identify relevant strategic environmental issues availa-ble to decision makers [Eisenhardt 1989, March and Olsen 1976, Vroom and Yetton 1973]. Crowd predictions are widely recognized for producing accurate predictions about the future [Hallin 2015, Hill 1982, Hong and Page 2004, Surowiecki 2004, Thompson 2012]. Strategic foresight and updated information about the future to support strategic decisions can be achieved by tapping into the collective wisdom of crowds [Berg and Rietz 2003, Mannes, Soll and Larrick 2014, O’Leary 2011, Wolfers and Zitzewitz 2004]. This paper introduces two empirical case studies on the identification of strategic issues for crowd pre-dictions performed in large international organizations, Copenhagen Airports and Maersk Training. The methods include interviews with key decision makers and crowd testing in order to identify relevant envi-ronmental, industrial, and firm uncertainties that are expected to affect the future financial performance of the firm over the next year