Scenario planning, scenario thinking, scenario analysis, scenario prediction and the scenario method all describe 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.
In the most common application of the method, analysts generate simulation games for policy makers. The method combines known facts, such as demographics, geography and mineral reserves, with military, political, and industrial information, and key driving forces identified by a PEST analysis or one of its variants, which consider social, technical, economic, environmental, and political aspects of an organisation's business environment.
In business applications, the emphasis on understanding the behavior of opponents has been reduced while more attention is now paid to changes in the natural environment. At Royal Dutch Shell for example, scenario planning has been described as changing mindsets about the exogenous part of the world prior to formulating specific strategies.
Scenario planning may involve aspects of systems thinking, specifically the recognition that many factors may combine in complex ways to create sometimes surprising futures (due to non-linear feedback loops). The method also allows the inclusion of factors that are difficult to formalize, such as novel insights about the future, deep shifts in values, and unprecedented regulations or inventions. Systems thinking used in conjunction with scenario planning leads to plausible scenario storylines because the causal relationship between factors can be demonstrated. These cases, in which scenario planning is integrated with a systems thinking approach to scenario development, are sometimes referred to as "dynamic scenarios".
Critics of using a subjective and heuristic methodology to deal with uncertainty and complexity argue that the technique has not been examined rigorously, nor influenced sufficiently by scientific evidence. They caution against using such methods to "predict" based on what can be described as arbitrary themes and "forecasting techniques".
A challenge and a strength of scenario-building is that "predictors are part of the social context about which they are trying to make a prediction and may influence that context in the process". As a consequence, societal predictions can become self-destructing. For example, a scenario in which a large percentage of a population will become HIV infected based on existing trends may cause more people to avoid risky behavior and thus reduce the HIV infection rate, invalidating the forecast (which might have remained correct if it had not been publicly known). Or, a prediction that cybersecurity will become a major issue may cause organizations to implement more secure cybersecurity measures, thus limiting the issue.
Principle Crafting scenarios Combinations and permutations of fact and related social changes are called "scenarios". Scenarios usually include plausible, but unexpectedly important, situations and problems that exist in some nascent form in the present day. Any particular scenario is unlikely. However, futures studies analysts select scenario features so they are both possible and uncomfortable. Scenario planning helps policy-makers and firms anticipate change, prepare responses, and create more robust strategies.
Wargames Analysts design wargames so that policy makers have flexibility and freedom to adapt their simulated organisations.
Applications Business In the past, strategic plans have often considered only the "official future", which was usually a straight-line graph of current trends carried into the future. Often the trend lines were generated by the accounting department, and lacked discussions of demographics, or qualitative differences in social conditions.
These simplistic guesses are surprisingly good most of the time, but fail to consider qualitative social changes that can affect a business or government. Paul J. H. Schoemaker offers a managerial case for the use of scenario planning in business.Schoemaker, Paul J.H. “Scenario Planning: A Tool for Strategic Thinking,” Sloan Management Review. Winter: 1995, pp. 25-40.
The approach may have had more impact outside Shell than within, as many others firms and consultancies started utilizing scenario planning. Scenario planning is prone to a variety of traps (both in process and content) as enumerated by Paul J. H. Schoemaker. More recently scenario planning has been discussed as a tool to improve the strategic agility, by cognitively preparing not only multiple scenarios but also multiple consistent strategies.
Finance
In economics and finance, a financial institution might use scenario analysis to forecast several possible scenarios for the economy (e.g. rapid growth, moderate growth, slow growth) and for financial returns (for bonds, stocks, cash, etc.) in each of those scenarios. It might consider sub-sets of each of the possibilities. It might further seek to determine correlations and assign probabilities to the scenarios (and sub-sets if any). Then it will be in a position to consider how to distribute assets between asset types (i.e. asset allocation); the institution can also calculate the scenario-weighted expected return (which figure will indicate the overall attractiveness of the financial environment). It may also perform stress testing, using adverse scenarios."Scenario Analysis in Risk Management", Bertrand Hassani, Published by Springer, 2016, ,
It can be difficult to foresee what the future holds (e.g. the actual future outcome may be entirely unexpected), i.e. to foresee what the scenarios are, and to assign probabilities to them; and this is true of the general forecasts never mind the implied financial market returns. The outcomes can be modeled mathematically/statistically e.g. taking account of possible variability within single scenarios as well as possible relationships between scenarios. In general, one should take care when assigning probabilities to different scenarios as this could invite a tendency to consider only the scenario with the highest probability.The Art of the Long View: Paths to Strategic Insight for Yourself and Your Company, Peter Schwartz, Published by Random House, 1996, Google book
History of use by academic and commercial organizations Most authors attribute the introduction of scenario planning to Herman Kahn through his work for the US Military in the 1950s at the RAND Corporation where he developed a technique of describing the future in stories as if written by people in the future. He adopted the term "scenarios" to describe these stories. In 1961 he founded the Hudson Institute where he expanded his scenario work to social forecasting and public policy.Schwartz, Peter, The Art of the Long View: Planning for the Future in an Uncertain World, New York: Currency Doubleday, 1991."Herman Kahn, The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2008, retrieved November 30, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Kahn-Her.htmlChermack, Thomas J., Susan A. Lynham, and Wendy E. A. Ruona. "A Review of Scenario Planning Literature", Futures Research Quarterly 7,2 (2001): 7-32.Lindgren, Mats, and Hans Bandhold. Scenario Planning: The Link between Future and Strategy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.Bradfield, Ron, et al. "The Origins and Evolution of Scenario Techniques in Long Range Business Planning." Futures 37 8 (2005): 795-812. One of his most controversial uses of scenarios was to suggest that a nuclear war could be won.Kahn, Herman. Thinking About the Unthinkable. New York: Horizon Press, 1965. Though Kahn is often cited as the father of scenario planning, at the same time Kahn was developing his methods at RAND, Gaston Berger was developing similar methods at the Centre d'Etudes Prospectives which he founded in France. His method, which he named 'La Prospective', was to develop normative scenarios of the future which were to be used as a guide in formulating public policy. During the mid-1960s various authors from the French and American institutions began to publish scenario planning concepts such as 'La Prospective' by Berger in 1964Berger, G. "Phénoménologies du Temps et Prospectives", Presse Universitaires de France, 1964. and 'The Next Thirty-Three Years' by Kahn and Wiener in 1967.Kahn, Herman, and Anthony J. Wiener. "The Next Thirty-Three Years: A Framework for Speculation." Daedalus 96 3 (1967): 705-32. By the 1970s scenario planning was in full swing with a number of institutions now established to provide support to business including the Hudson Foundation, the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), and the SEMA Metra Consulting Group in France. Several large companies also began to embrace scenario planning including DHL Express, Dutch Royal Shell and General Electric.Godet, Michel, and Fabrice Roubelat. "Creating the Future :The Use and Misuse of Scenarios." Long Range Planning 29 2 (1996): 164-71.Godet, Michel, Fabrice Roubelat, and Guest Editors. "Scenario Planning: An Open Future." Technological Forecasting and Social Change 65 1 (2000): 1-2.
Possibly as a result of these very sophisticated approaches, and of the difficult techniques they employed (which usually demanded the resources of a central planning staff), scenarios earned a reputation for difficulty (and cost) in use. Even so, the theoretical importance of the use of alternative scenarios, to help address the uncertainty implicit in long-range forecasts, was dramatically underlined by the widespread confusion which followed the Oil Shock of 1973. As a result, many of the larger organizations started to use the technique in one form or another. By 1983 Diffenbach reported that 'alternate scenarios' were the third most popular technique for long-range forecasting – used by 68% of the large organizations he surveyed.Diffenbach, John. "Corporate Environmental Analysis in Large US Corporations," Long Range Planning. 16 (3), 1983.
Practical development of scenario forecasting, to guide strategy rather than for the more limited academic uses which had previously been the case, was started by Pierre Wack in 1971 at the Royal Dutch Shell group of companies – and it, too, was given impetus by the Oil Shock two years later. Shell has, since that time, led the commercial world in the use of scenarios – and in the development of more practical techniques to support these. Indeed, as – in common with most forms of long-range forecasting – the use of scenarios has (during the depressed trading conditions of the last decade) reduced to only a handful of private-sector organisations, Shell remains almost alone amongst them in keeping the technique at the forefront of forecasting.Wack, Peter, "Scenarios: Uncharted Waters Ahead", Harvard Business Review, September–October, 1985.
There has only been anecdotal evidence offered in support of the value of scenarios, even as aids to forecasting; and most of this has come from one company – Shell. In addition, with so few organisations making consistent use of them – and with the timescales involved reaching into decades – it is unlikely that any definitive supporting evidenced will be forthcoming in the foreseeable future. For the same reasons, though, a lack of such proof applies to almost all long-range planning techniques. In the absence of proof, but taking account of Shell's well documented experiences of using it over several decades (where, in the 1990s, its then CEO ascribed its success to its use of such scenarios), can be significant benefit to be obtained from extending the horizons of managers' long-range forecasting in the way that the use of scenarios uniquely does.Mercer, David. "Simpler Scenarios", Management Decision, Vol. 33 Issue 4:1995, pp 32-40
Process