Janet Chang’s Blog about Design

Setting Research Targets: Using a Scenario Planning Process to Envision How the World Might Change

Speaker: Colleen Murray, Jump Associates
Date: September 20, 2008

The origins of scenario planning

Developing and communicating scenario worlds

Frameworks

• Make sense of what you see
• Build mental models, maps and metaphors
• Use needs to highlight opportunities

Imperatives

• Suggest directions and principles for development
• Offer guidelines for prioritizing and making decisions

Observations

• See the world with fresh eyes
• Listen and Learn
• Find points of view

Solutions

• Make concepts tangible
• Have an impact
• Get feedback

Seven Steps to planning scenarios:

1. Focal Issue – A specific, high-level strategic challenge facing the organization.
2. Key factors and Driving Forces – Key Factors (impacting the business) and Driving Forces (going on in the macro-environment) influencing the focal issue.

Common Practice – Focus on understanding the problem at hand
Reframe – Look broadly to expand and inform our thinking

“What will our business look like in 2025? Should we make an acquisition in a new industry?”

3. Critical Uncertainties – Understanding which forces will happen, which won’t and which will be critical and less critical?

Common Practice – Uncover the most relevant trends that exists today
Reframe – Imagine where trends are going, not just where they are now

“How will Millennials change the business culture? What role will the new administration have on the economy?”

4. Scenario Logics – The underlying rationales that make up a scenario’s plot.

Common Practice – Use imperatives as a tool to guide ideation
Reframe – Use ideation as a tool to explore what’s most important

“How plausible is this scenario? Does it challenge conventional thinking? Does it help us make decisions?”

5. Scenario Experiences – Illustrate the key critical uncertainties in action, describing how they unfold over the next seven to ten years.
6. Implications – How does the focal issue look in light of the scenarios? What are the strategic implications? What should we do?

Common Practice – Visualize ideas to make them tangible and increase impact
Reframe – Develop rich experiences to give context to solutions

“Write a story. Bring each scenario to life to people”

“How the focal issue look in light of the scenarios? What are the strategic implications? What’s next?”

7. Leading Indicators – What trends to monitor along the way?

Common Practice – step through the process to reach a great solution
Reframe – The strategic conversation never ends

“What are the indicators to monitor along the way”?

Strategies to make confident, smarter decisions in times of changes

• Focus on trends that are highly unlikely, yet impactful.
• Opportunities for the future of business travel.
• Cross different driving forces to ideate potential solutions

• Facilitating multi-sensory experiences
• Monitor how the future is shaping up
• Map the trends within opportunity spaces

Seminar video available – Go to video.