Keywords: strategic planning, plausability, predetermined elements, critical uncertainty, driving forces...

Instructor: Art Kleiner

References: 'The Art Of The Long View' and 'Inevitable Surprises' by Peter Schwartz, 'Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege and Success' by Art Kleiner

Date: Spring 2004

SCENARIO PLANNING

Scenario planning is a strategic planning method that some organizations use to make flexible long-term plans. It is in large part an adaptation and generalization of classic methods used by military intelligence.

The basic method is that a group of analysts generate simulation games for policy makers. The games combine known facts about the future, such as demographics, geography, military, political and industrial information, and mineral reserves, with particular possible social, technical and political trends.

Scenario planning can include elements that are difficult to formalize, such as subjective interpretations of facts, shifts in values, new regulations or inventions. These combinations of fact and possible social changes are called "scenarios." The scenarios usually include plausible, but unexpectedly important situations and problems that exist in some small form in the present day.

Here you have a couple of exercises in scenario planning.

The Internet and Cell Phones as Platforms for the Development of Grassroots Movements

In 2004, the expansion of the internet and the development of social networks through technology has allowed the civil society to organize in ways that were not possible before. Thanks to technology, the citizenship has the power to make its opinion be heard louder and clearer, and new grassroots movements are beginning to influence the way that politics is made. [...]

Driving Forces: Migrations (specially in Spain and the European Union)

Among the current driving forces I have chosen migration because even though it’s an old phenomenon, I have seen it develop in a clear way during the last few years.
Putting aside the floods of people from the countryside to the city (specially important during the 60s) and concentrating on international migrations, during the XXth century, Spain was pretty much origin of migrations, rather than a reception country. [...]