Scenarios, Strategy and the Strategy Process
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Anchoring your scenarios firmly to your “business idea,” will increase their relevance and value as a strategic and management tool.
Applying scenario thinking to the strategic planning process helps planners overcome the paralysis that can result from facing uncertainty in a "predict and control" frame of mind. For an organization, the scenario process offers a way of thinking creatively yet systematically about possible future environments, and of developing strategies and then testing them for these environments. This article develops and illustrates these ideas with both practical procedures and relevant theoretical concepts. Scenario thinking ultimately concerns the organization itself: in its current state will it be capable of implementing the strategies it develops? A new tool, "the business idea," is presented here which offers the organization a way of thinking about itself.
Applying scenario thinking to the strategic planning process helps planners overcome the paralysis that can result from facing uncertainty in a "predict and control" frame of mind. For an organization, the scenario process offers a way of thinking creatively yet systematically about possible future environments, and of developing strategies and then testing them for these environments. This article develops and illustrates these ideas with both practical procedures and relevant theoretical concepts. Scenario thinking ultimately concerns the organization itself: in its current state will it be capable of implementing the strategies it develops? A new tool, "the business idea," is presented here which offers the organization a way of thinking about itself.
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