3.1) Scenario Planning Approaches

Question 1

Scenarios Typology

Answer 1

depend on your purpose in using scenarios to explore the future and organisation’s degree of foresight readiness

• Inductive scenarios (or bottom-up) - emerge from discussion and exploration of drivers and trends
• Deductive scenarios (or top-down) - choose two or more of those drivers to structure scenario worlds
• Incremental scenarios - are similar to the official future but different enough to move in a different direction
• Normative scenarios (visioning) - these are the futures that we believe ‘should’ happen

Question 2

The Incremental Approach

Answer 2

• start by articulating the official future (the one you are planning for) and exploring what must be true for thos future to be realized
• then: how could we be wrong about the official future?
• next: develop at least two stories of the future that diverge from the official future (provocative and plausible)

somewhat conservative

Question 3

The Inductive Approach

Answer 3

• Develop several stories
  
  • study, refine and deepen them until you arrive at a set of divergent, plausible, and challenging scenarios that are relevant to your focal question
• often while developing we can identify and underlying structural framework (e.g., a matrix)
• identifiying a framework that highlights relationships between scenarios can be helpful when communicating the scenario set

Question 4

The Deductive Approach

Answer 4

1. picture 2 critical uncertainties on axes that frame the poles of what seems possible in the time frame
2. try different combinations
3. cross two axes and create framework to explore four possible scenarios

• Settling on a scenario framework is trial-and-error
  
  • 4 quadrants / 4 scenarios
  • in each quadrants: key ideas/possible and contrasting stories
  • does the set of scenarios “illuminates” the strategic focus