Scenario Planning

Scenarios are stories about how the future might unfold. For COSE, they are stories about how the health care issue may play out and the subsequent implications for members, small business, and our country. These scenarios are not predictions. Rather, they are positioned as provocative and plausible stories about diverse ways in which relevant issues outside the organization might evolve, such as the future political environment, social attitudes, regulation, and the strength of the economy.

Because scenarios are hypotheses, not predictions, they are created and used in sets of multiple stories—usually three or four—that capture a range of future possibilities, good and bad, expected and surprising. Scenarios are designed to stretch our thinking about the opportunities and threats that the future might hold, and to weigh those opportunities and threats carefully when making both short-term and long-term strategic decisions.

Origins of Scenario Planning
Scenarios as a tool for strategy have their origins in military and corporate planning. After World War II, the U.S. military used scenarios to imagine what its opponents might do.

In the 1960s, Herman Kahn, who played an important role in the military’s use of scenarios, introduced scenarios to a corporate audience, including Royal Dutch/Shell. In the 1970s, Pierre Wack, a planner for Shell and the originator for scenario planning as it is used today, brought the use of scenarios to a new level. Wack used scenarios to get inside the minds of decision-makers in order to affect strategic decisions. Wack used scenarios to paint vivid and diverse pictures of the future so that decision-makers at Shell could rehearse the implications for the company. As a result, Shell was able to anticipate the Arab oil embargo, and later to anticipate and prepare for the dramatic drop in oil prices in the 1980s.

Since then, scenario thinking has become a popular tool for the development of corporate strategy in numerous industries.

About Global Business Network (GBN)*
Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Global Business Network was founded in 1987 as a unique learning community based on ruthless curiosity, collaboration, and powerful new tools for thinking about and shaping the future.

GBN's network continues to span the globe, blending strategic thinkers from leading companies in established and emerging industries; visionaries from the sciences, arts, business, and academia; and a community of practice engaged in innovating and transferring tools for scenario thinking and strategic action. GBN has convened this network, both electronically and in-person, to explore emerging issues and ideas and their implications for business and society.

For almost 20 years GBN's WorldView membership service served as the mechanism for generating collaborative thinking about the future across geographies and industries, outside of proprietary consulting engagements. More than 200 global organizations participated as WorldView members.

GBN—including its cofounders, its next generation of leader, and practitioners, and its network members—continues to build on its unique history and vision to help organizations address the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.

*Source: www.gbn.com