What are scenarios for?

Citation

Blackman, C. (2007), "What are scenarios for?", Foresight, Vol. 9 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/fs.2007.27309aaa.001

What are scenarios for?

I don’t think it is just my imagination, but it seems apparent that scenarios are increasingly being used by all kinds of organisations and in many different contexts. No study or project worth its salt these days, whether it be for an international organisation, a government department or private company, would be complete without scenarios being used in some way, shape or form. One would hope that this would reflect the fact that more and more organisations and people are comfortable with thinking about and planning for the future. Indeed, for most people, scenarios and foresight or thinking about the future are virtually synonymous.

Nevertheless it quickly becomes apparent to anyone who has participated in any kind of scenario-based study that it is typical for there to be misunderstanding, misconception or just plain disagreement about even the most basic aspects of scenario planning. In some contexts, scenarios are seen as dangerous – merely positing a scenario might suggest that it is a preferred future rather than just a way of exploring “what if … ”. Indeed I was once involved in a study where the term “scenario” could not even be used – road map being considered more acceptable. I have also been involved in studies where one participant only wanted one “successful” scenario to be explored, for to consider any other possibility was to suggest failure or weakness. So, despite their increasing use, there is still a need for greater understanding about how they can be used.

That is why the article in this issue by Peter Bishop, Andy Hines and Terry Collins is to be welcomed. Their paper provides a very good overview of the state of the art of scenario development and examines all the major techniques. They point out that so successful has been the methodology developed by Pierre Wack and popularised by the likes of Peter Schwartz, Kees van der Heiden and others, that most people ware unaware that there are at least two dozen other scenario development techniques out there. Indeed, most researchers, consultants and practitioners are likely to have begun by borrowing someone else’s methodology and tweaked it in their own personal way.

In their research, Bishop, Hines and Collins found that although several authors have previously characterized techniques according to some high-level attributes, none has actually classified the actual techniques in use. Based on are view of the literature, they found eight general categories of scenario techniques, typically with two or three variations in each category, resulting in more than two dozen techniques overall. Their article will be a useful addition to the literature in helping to avoid confusion. As they conclude:

Scenario development is the heart of futures studies. It is a key technique that distinguishes the work of professional futurists from other professions who deal with the future. With its popularity, however, has come confusion about what exactly scenario development is, and how futurists actually produce scenarios. This catalog of scenario techniques is an attempt to lay some of that confusion to rest. We trust that it moves the discussion forward, but it does not end it by any means. In fact, we hope to be able to discuss scenario techniques in a new and more precise fashion. Eventually, we trust the field will settle on a consensus list that we can use to describe and improve our practice.

Some of the difficulties experienced in scenario building exercises are described and analysed by Derek Wallace in his article, “From future states to images of identity”, which focuses on national scenario building exercises in New Zealand. Wallace points a fundamental problem in the use of scenarios in that there is frequently confusion over what they are being used for. Are they being used to help manage uncertainty or are they part of a process of envisioning the future. In the former, more “classical” use, it is about considering possibilities arising from uncertainties or drivers of change, which would lead to a range of possible future states, none of which are intended as predictions of the future as such. In the latter, possible futures are imagined, which may be utopian or dystopian or, usually in the eyes of policy makers, desirable. Then it becomes a matter of working out a policy path to reach the desired future.

Wallace takes the view that scenario-building in a national government context is simply “too ambitious, too socially unitary, and too implicitly long term to be really useful as a primary focus”. Instead he proposes an alternative approach that focuses on developing images of national identity or conduct rather than envisioning or predicting future states.

What should we conclude from these two articles? Fundamentally it is that different techniques are appropriate in different contexts. And in the end it is more important to design and adapt a process to engage the participants as fully as possible such that they can find a way of engaging with the future rather than be fixated on whether one particular technique is better than another.

Colin Blackman