Scenarios Overview

Scenarios are sets of usually two to four hypothetical futures intended to be used as the basis for strategic discussions. They differ from forecasts and policy proposals in that they do not claim to predict what will happen or what should happen but what could happen. Scenarios must be challenging, plausible, and clear in order to be useful. 

Scenarios require us to look at the same events or circumstances from different points of view. They challenge us to explore our daily transactional environment in relation to the larger contextual environment of the political, social, economic, technological, and environmental forces that impact us.

One of the most powerful functions of scenario work is to shake up the official version of the future that we always carry in our heads, whether we know it or not. We are storytelling creatures but seldom realize that the unexamined story we hold about the future is always and only a fiction. When we contemplate equally plausible but mutually exclusive fictions, we begin to break the habit of holding our stories of the future as forecasts rather than fictions. And when we participate in a dialogue within different imagined worlds of the future, we create a space in which transformative ideas can emerge.

Scenarios are foundations for strategic conversations. In these conversations, the aim is not to decide which is the most plausible future or even which is the most desirable future. The most useful question is “What would be our best course of action if this world turns out to be our future?” Of course, some of the best outcomes of a scenario project are the serendipitous ideas that arise from a conversation in which no one has to speak from a policy position or choose sides or talk to win a debate.

Thinking About the Future: Drivers & Uncertainties

Comparison of the Scenarios