Scenarios and Strategy
In this video series, GBN cofounder Peter Schwartz discusses the value of scenario planning and some key success factors.
This article published by Orlen in Planning in Times of Uncertainty describes how scenario planning can be a powerful tool for exploring the future and emerging business models.
Twenty years after the publication of The Art of the Long View, GBN cofounder Peter Schwartz reflects on lessons learned and the scenarios that may lie ahead.
GBN senior practitioner Matt Ranen applies the art of scenario planning to supply chain strategy in Inside Supply Management article.
Peter Schwartz describes how, in a world of cascading crises, governments and companies can stay ahead of the curve.
Four scenarios on the future of technology and international development illuminate the tremendous opportunities (and challenges) that lie ahead, especially in emerging countries, as government, philanthropy, and business use technology to eradicate poverty and increase future options, prosperity and well being for billions.
The history, process, value, and application of scenario planning in a variety of industries is explored.
Seven dynamic tensions that are shaping the future, excepted from Powerful Times: Rising to the Challenge of Our Uncertain World
In times of great uncertainty, scenario planning can help executives develop more adaptive, robust strategies.
Executives can anticipate, prepare for, and act on strategic surprises by using scenario thinking and related tools.
Herman Miller, the noted workplace design company, has used scenario planning to explore the future of work and to engage its customers in an ongoing conversation about the implications. In this interview published in SEE magazine, Chris Ertel, GBN, and Maryln Walton, Herman Miller, discuss their work together and the value of thinking scenarically.
In this Financial Times article, GBN CEO Eamonn Kelly describes the causes and consequences of growing uncertainty and recommends six concepts that will enable businesses to embrace paradox and the unknown.
Got risk? Try scenario thinking. In this Financial Times article, Chris Ertel and Doug Randall, lay out the reasons why scenario thinking is an effective approach for managing risk.
For a special Financial Times series on "mastering risk," GBN tackles the common perception that risk is something to be avoided and minimized.
“Plotting Your Scenarios” by two GBN cofounders is an invaluable introduction to the art and process of scenario planning.
A discussion of how scenario thinking can best be adapted for small resource-constrained organizations working for the public interest.
How different is scenario planning done for public versus private purposes? The authors distill a set of lessons based on regional scenario planning projects run by GBN throughout the 1990s.
GBN's scenario guide encourages nonprofit leaders to challenge the status quo, or get better at doing so, by asking "What if?"
An essay by GBN's Eamonn Kelly, from the book Best Practice: Ideas and Insights from the World's Foremost Business Thinkers
This case study describes how Texaco’s Strategic Management Group (SMG) used the scenario process to analyze the external business environment and identify the challenges, options, and strategic alternatives facing Texaco into the future. The analysis helped to create the strategic context for subsequent investment and policy decisions by the company.
Investing in engagement and communication strategies will substantially increase the value of your scenarios.
A seminal paper describing how anchoring your scenarios firmly to your “business idea,” will increase their relevance and value as a strategic and management tool.
GBN cofounder Jay Ogilvy gives a quick introduction to existentialism, and applies the lessons to business issues.
How Royal Dutch Shell gathered and harnessed heretics to think strategically about the future.
Report of a national, multi-stakeholder scenario project on the future of Colombia.
For a special “Scenarios” edition of Wired magazine, GBN cofounder Lawrence Wilkinson describes how to use scenarios to plan for “long fuse, big bang” problems in an era of uncertainty.
This set of scenarios, developed by GBN and Ohio's Council of Smaller Enterprises, examines the future of U.S. healthcare from the perspective of small businesses five or 10 years from now,
Technology case studies show how scenarios can help address paralysis and denial, twin obstacles that prevent successful companies from adopting new growth strategies.
Twenty senior U.S. executives, in cooperation with the Environmental Protection, assess the possible strategic impacts of energy across a range of future scenarios.
The pioneering multi-stakeholder scenario process that helped bring down apartheid in South Africa.
People
David Harris
GBN Network
Political analyst and journalist; author of 11 books, including Our War (on Vietnam), The Last Stand (on old-growth forests), Shooting the Moon (on Manuel Noriega), The Crisis (on Iran), and The Genius (on legendary football coach Bill Walsh)