Methodology

Scenario planning is a disciplined and powerful methodology to help anticipate changes in the external environment. It makes explicit the uncertainty facing decision makers by developing a number of different future scenarios, each of which charts a plausible, coherent and challenging path of change into the future. The process starts with a collection of views and insights from a wide range of sources, including other existing studies and forecasts that recently have been developed on this subject.

The purpose of scenario planning therefore is not to predict the single most probable future but to let very different strategic alternatives inform decision-making today. It allows the evaluation of strategic options against the background of very different, but equally probable, futures.

Scenario planning is an interactive and creative process, benefiting from a diversity of perspectives. The approach is multi-perspective and non-normative: it is not about what stakeholders want to happen, but about what could happen. The result is deeper insight into the driving forces shaping the future. Scenario planning has been widely used to inform strategic decision-making in many different contexts, by corporations, public authorities and multi-stakeholder groups.

Participants of a scenario planning exercise experience that the outcome can help them:

• to notice and interpret signals from their environment in a more direct way
• to raise the awareness of an organisation, pointing to important and relevant issues with strategists or policy makers
• to foresee the long term consequences of strategic choices and to build more robust strategies
• to discuss otherwise difficult issues with third parties