The starting point of this cumulative dissertation is the observation that, nowadays, organizations find themselves in a fast-paced and increasingly complex and uncertain environment. Therefore, understanding weak signals and developments that may affect them in the medium to long run is important to build up "strategic preparedness" (Ansoff, 1975). For this purpose, foresight represents a promising approach. Recently, the concept of open foresight has been introduced in the literature to describe an opening of the process by tapping into external knowledge sources. (Open) Foresight does not only lead to understanding possible futures, but should also derive implications for action and trigger appropriate organizational responses, e.g. by initializing innovation projects. However, established firms often encounter difficulties in fostering innovation. As one possible approach to address this situation, Corporate Venturing Units (CVU) have long been used to hatch internal innovations or support external startups through financial investments. Yet, it seems that a new wave of CVUs with a stronger strategic orientation is emerging, which seek to leverage external ventures in a more cooperative way. Some incumbents set up incubators and accelerators to support external startups, while entering in exchange and collaboration with these in order to benefit from their innovativeness. Other established firms founded company builders, which focus on generating, validating and implementing their own internal ideas, while also being very externally oriented through interacting and partnering with actors in the startup ecosystem. Research on the outlined topics is still in an early stage and some open questions will be investigated in this cumulative dissertation. The four papers partly build on one another and complement each other. Overall, the dissertation seeks to provide a holistic perspective to the overarching question: How do organizations use open foresight and business incubation as strategic means to explore trends and promote innovation? Drawing on a systematic literature review, conceptual as well as qualitative-empirical research approaches, this dissertation derives important contributions. Paper I describes the concept of “open foresight” as well as its defining elements and outlines how integrating external knowledge sources can enrich ‘established’ foresight. Paper II provides a typology of open foresight methods that are suitable for drawing on user knowledge and outlines their advantages, disadvantages and boundary conditions. Paper III offers an overview of the main findings from state-of-the-art research on the topic of business incubators and accelerators and identifies areas where further research is needed. Paper IV identifies distinct processes in different CVUs, shows how they enable strategic knowledge search, selection of strategically fitting ventures and subsequent strategic collaboration, and discusses how these functions help the CVU to fulfil its organizational charter in either a more exploitative or a more explorative mode.