Collaborative Trend Foresight for Sustainable Digital Supply Chains: A Cross‐Sectoral Case Study From Austrian Retail Ecosystems

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates how cross‐sectoral collaboration supports the evaluation and strategic prioritisation of digital and sustainability‐driven trends in retail‐centred supply chains in Austria. As supply chain transformation increasingly depends on coordinated action among heterogeneous stakeholders, understanding how diverse actors jointly assess emerging trends becomes critical for sustainable digitalisation. Moving beyond company‐centric analyses, the study adopts a collaborative foresight approach based on the World Café method, in which 28 experts from 15 organisations spanning retail, logistics, technology and academia jointly evaluated six megatrends and 38 associated macrotrends regarding their maturity and potential. The findings reveal that key trends underpinning collaborative intelligent manufacturing, including predictive analytics, generative AI, digital twins and resilient supply chains, are classified as immediately actionable and form the technological backbone of cyber–physical decision‐making systems across supply chain stages. Sustainability‐related developments such as circular economy practices and alternative materials emerge as transversal drivers requiring end‐to‐end integration and coordinated capability development across organisational boundaries. A cross‐sectoral comparison of academic and practitioner evaluations demonstrates that panel composition materially influences strategic recommendations, with nine macrotrends shifting action categories when only practitioner ratings are considered. This substantiates that interdisciplinary participation directly shapes foresight outcomes and resulting prioritisation decisions. The study introduces a structured Act–Prepare–Observe–Notice classification framework that supports collaborative decision‐making and resource allocation, offering a scalable instrument transferable to manufacturing supply chain contexts. By conceptualising trend evaluation as a cross‐sectoral, collaborative process integrating perspectives from retail, logistics, technology and academia, the paper contributes empirical evidence on interdisciplinary approaches to sustainable digitalisation in supply chains. The results underline that successful digital transformation requires balancing short‐term operational deployment of mature technologies with long‐term investment in shared data standards, interoperable infrastructures and joint foresight activities to navigate the twin transition of digitalisation and sustainability.