Marketers expressing the future: Scenario planning for marketing action

Thomas Friedman exhorts us to imagine the future [1] - we urge marketers to invent the future, to learn the future faster, and to deliver the future earlier. Marketers are asked to develop scenarios about emerging technologies such as broadband wireless but more often than not have no education or training in scenario planning. Also marketers are often stuck in a strategic planning mindset based on successful replication of past marketing strategies. Strategic management and marketing learning has ventured into futures and foresight methodologies, but with strong focus on conventional macroscopic high-level scenario planning methods.This paper positions scenario planning as a method to express the future vision, both tacit and explicit, of business, products and services in a clear succinct story form, to underpin all elements of a marketing strategy (goals, position and execution). The scenario planning for marketing action (SPMA) model is introduced and discussed incorporating eight principles: moderation and time compression; storytelling led new product and service development; customer orientation; iterative dynamic scenarios; complexity science to foster non-linear thinking; risk weighted scenarios; participant hosted scenario workshops; springboard consolidation.The SPMA method was proven and evolved within postgraduate Executive education courses in Sydney and Bangkok from 2003 to 2007. This approach is fundamental for marketers to gain competences in “learning the future faster”, thus possessing capabilities to imagine and invent the future and deliver the future earlier.     

Participative landscape planning in rural areas: A case study from Novodvorsko, Žehušicko,Czech Republic

According to the European Landscape Convention, landscape quality objectives should be defined for assessed landscapes as a part of landscape policies. The pilot study for Novodvorsko and Žehušicko in Central Bohemia is focused on sustainable landscape development with regard to the economic development, but also on the protection of natural and socio-cultural landscape qualities. The aim of this study is to investigate the implementation of the European Landscape Convention at the local level. The landscape quality objective should be a long-term strategic vision for making a landscape policy that could be used as a basis for strategic landscape planning documents. First, a landscape diagnosis was proposed. Then, four different scenarios for landscape development were assessed (integration, segregation, exploitation, and abandonment scenario). Finally, a landscape quality objective was developed. All process was closely connected with participative landscape planning; local stakeholders were involved to the whole process.     

Scenario development for corporate planning

The term “scenario” is familiar to those involved in forecasting, but too few people are aware of what exactly a scenario is, or how it can best be developed and applied. The author describes a method developed over several years in response to a need which most forecasting efforts have left unfulfilled. The method enables quantitative and qualitative forecasts to be combined in a manner which can be directly related to an organisation's planning and decision-making processes, and which permits the evaluation of a company's objectives and performance in the light of those forecasts. The analysis of an organisation's likely performance in given scenarios can, in turn, provide a basis for contingency planning.     

Creating the future: Goal-oriented Scenario Planning

Do current scenario planning techniques ignore an organizations ability to create its future? Social constructionists and organizational theorists have indicated that the future of an organization can be enacted by its constituents. Yet it is apparent that scenario planning techniques, used by organizations to plan for their future, tend to emphasize a future that the organization must react to instead of create. By emphasizing a future that the organizations must react to, it may ignore and completely miss the opportunity it has to create or enact the future it wants to have.Scenario planning, however, can evolve to support a creative foresight and approach to the future by recognizing the power behind enactment theory and applying a goal-oriented approach to the scenario planning process. Using goal-oriented scenario planning an organization can match the world it wants with the world it expects to see.     

Enhancing the role of participatory scenario planning processes: Lessons from Reality Check exercises

This paper critically assesses a series of scenario planning exercises in the Washington Metropolitan region and the State of Maryland within a broad and evolving framework of participatory planning. Reality Check, as the exercises were called, were a daylong set of activities using tools that encouraged stakeholder participation to develop scenarios focused on long-term regional sustainability. The paper draws upon planning theory, participant reactions, media reports, post-exercise outcomes and author's experiences of shaping the process. It illustrates how the model was adapted to multiple scales and contexts, and variations in desired technical complexity. The paper concludes that such processes have an inherent value in capturing the issues of the future and in creating awareness and knowledge. It argues that certain considerations such as early strategic engagement of stakeholders, flexibility of technical tools and diversity among organizers, all played a role in enhancing the dialogue. Furthermore, it suggests that when timed with favorable external conditions and designed within suitable institutional frameworks, they have the potential to provide a foundation from which tangible regional benefits can be realized.     

Fear of foresight: Knowledge and ignorance in organizational foresight

We discuss the changes occurring in the field of organizational foresight. The analysis results from viewing foresight from two different perspectives: as centered on the future or on the present; as macroscopic analysis or microscopic practice. The combination of these factors results in four different modes of organizational foresight: strategic planning, visioning, scenario thinking and planned emergence. These different perspectives are examined. We contribute to the literature by presenting foresight as a complex process, amenable to different understandings. Foresight is often portrayed as a technical and analytic process. We discuss it as a human process permeated by a dialectic between the need to know and the fear of knowing.     

Perceptions of the relationship between scenario planning and firm performance: A qualitative study

This paper presents research findings from the application of scenario planning in multinational firms that operate in competitive industries. We use exclusive and not publicly available data to investigate the link between scenario planning and firm performance from a qualitative perspective. The focus was primarily on firms that had real-life experiences with this strategic tool. Our research suggests that scenario planning is interwoven in how strategy is formulated and that it has a major influence on decisions taken by management. We also found that none of the firms reported formal efforts of assessing the success rate of scenario planning. Participants report that this is due to difficulties in measuring qualitative and quantitative outcomes and because standardized assessment tools are not readily available for this kind of strategic intervention. Overall, participants generally regarded scenario planning as an effective intervention with a positive contribution to the firms’ performance. When pressed for more detail, participants revealed that scenario planning techniques were useful in exploring the business environment and future risks, isolating trends, understanding interdependent forces, and considering the implications of strategic decision-making.     

Perceived Environmental Uncertainty in scenario planning

Scenario planning is a strategy tool with growing popularity in both academia and practical situations. Current practices of scenario planning are largely based on existing literature which utilises scenario planning to develop strategies for the future, primarily considering the assessment of perceived macro-external environmental uncertainties. However there is a body of literature hitherto ignored by scenario planning researchers, which suggests that Perceived Environmental Uncertainty (PEU) influences the micro-external as well as the internal environment of the organisation. This paper reviews the most dominant theories on scenario planning process and PEU, developing three propositions for the practice of scenario planning process. Furthermore, it shows how these propositions can be integrated in the scenario planning process in order to improve the development of strategy.     

The reflective futures practitioner: Balancing salience,credibility and legitimacy in generating foresight knowledge with stakeholders

This paper explores how foresight researchers involved in environmental, nature and planning issues attempt to balance salience, credibility and legitimacy while generating knowledge in interaction with policy-makers and other social actors. Engaging stakeholders in foresight processes can increase the robustness of foresight knowledge, broaden the spectrum of issues addressed, and create ‘ownership’ of the process. While in foresight practices stakeholder participation becomes more and more popular to resort to as enabling factor for generating salient, legitimate and credible foresight knowledge, participation can also compromise these qualities. We analysed two foresight projects conducted at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, one that developed future visions for Dutch nature policy and another that focused on future pathways for Dutch urban sustainable development policy. We illustrate that the dynamics of the research setting – changes in the socio-political context and the internal dynamics of the participatory efforts – complicated the balancing process. We conclude that one of the main challenges for futures practitioners is, therefore, to work within the dynamics of the research setting, and to position themselves strategically in this setting; by acting as ‘reflective futures practitioners’.     

Unmasking scenario planning: The colonization of the future in the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program

In the Netherlands, the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program has been introduced by the Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations in 2014, in the context of the ongoing transformation of the Dutch welfare state; more specifically, the transformation of the social care sector. Scenario planning is a major preoccupation in this program and two major reports have been published in this connection. In this article, the authenticity of the scenario planning of the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program is questioned. It is found that the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program’s scenario planning is not a real scenario planning but, instead, a continuation of the neoliberal discourse by hegemonic stakeholders that seek to ‘close’ the future. It is concluded in this article that in the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program the future is colonized and presented as an impersonal trend in which governmental agency for creatively negating and transcending the neoliberal discourse is irrelevant.     

National foresight in science and technology strategy development

The paper is concerned with the national foresight exercises in Thailand to devise the key science and technology (S&T) strategies. The Thai government, through the National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA), has used the foresight processes to influence policy making and create national foresight programmes. The foresight exercise, covering the period from 2000 to 2020, aims to examine the potential of the Thai industry and investigate a set of development policies necessary to make the Thai industry successful by the year 2020. Three rounds of strategic conferences comprising 2677 people were set up to create a vision for the future of the industry. The results of the foresight process provide a comprehensive overview of the trends of the Thai industry. The study contributes towards the formulation of feasible technological and industrial policies, which would enhance the country's ability to improve the competitive position for tomorrow.     

Using scenarios to explore UK upland futures

Uplands around the world are facing significant social, economic and environmental changes, and decision-makers need to better understand what the future may hold if they are to adapt and maintain upland goods and services. This paper draws together all major research comprising eight studies that have used scenarios to describe possible futures for UK uplands. The paper evaluates which scenarios are perceived by stakeholders to be most likely and desirable, and assesses the benefits and drawbacks of the scenario methods used in UK uplands to date. Stakeholders agreed that the most desirable and likely scenario would be a continuation of hill farming (albeit at reduced levels) based on cross-compliance with environmental measures. The least desirable scenario is a withdrawal of government financial support for hill farming. Although this was deemed by stakeholders to be the least likely scenario, the loss of government support warrants close attention due to its potential implications for the local economy. Stakeholders noted that the environmental implications of this scenario are much less clear-cut. As such, there is an urgent need to understand the full implications of this scenario, so that upland stakeholders can adequately prepare, and policy-makers can better evaluate the likely implications of different policy options. The paper concludes that in future, upland scenario research needs to: (1) better integrate in-depth and representative participation from stakeholders during both scenario development and evaluation; and (2) make more effective use of visualisation techniques and simulation models.     

Is your vision consistent?: A method for checking, based on scenario concepts

Common sense tells us that the future is an essential element in any strategy. In addition, there is a good deal of literature on scenario planning, which is an important tool in considering the future in terms of strategy. However, in many organizations there is serious resistance to the development of scenarios, and they are not broadly implemented by companies. But even organizations that do not rely heavily on the development of scenarios do, in fact, construct visions to guide their strategies. But it might be asked, what happens when this vision is not consistent with the future? To address this problem, the present article proposes a method for checking the content and consistency of an organization's vision of the future, no matter how it was conceived. The proposed method is grounded on theoretical concepts from the field of future studies, which are described in this article. This study was motivated by the search for developing new ways of improving and using scenario techniques as a method for making strategic decisions. The method was then tested on a company in the field of information technology in order to check its operational feasibility. The test showed that the proposed method is, in fact, operationally feasible and was capable of analyzing the vision of the company being studied, indicating both its shortcomings and points of inconsistency.     

Future visioning of local climate change: A framework for community engagement and planning with scenarios and visualisation

There is an urgent need for meaningful information and effective public processes at the local level to build awareness, capacity, and agency on climate change, and support planning and decision-making. This paper describes a conceptual framework to meet these requirements by generating alternative, coherent, holistic climate change scenarios and visualizations at the local scale, in collaboration with local stakeholders and scientists. The framework provides a template for a process to integrate emission scenarios with both mitigation and adaptation strategies, and to link local manifestations of impacts and responses with global climate change scenarios. The article outlines the empirical application of this framework in the Local Climate Change Visioning Project in British Columbia, Canada. The project collaboratively localized, spatialized, and visualized possible climate change effects and community responses in the community's ‘backyards’. The article concludes with lessons learned and suggested principles for future visioning efforts to engage communities in possible policy and behavioural choices.     

The origins and evolution of scenario techniques in long range business planning

Scenario Planning has been around for more than 30 years and during this period a multitude of techniques and methodologies have developed, resulting in what has been described as a ‘methodological chaos’ which is unlikely to disappear in the near future (A. Martelli, Scenario building and scenario planning: state of the art and prospects of evolution, Futures Research Quarterly Summer (2001)). This is reflected in the fact that literature reveals an abundance of different and at times contradictory definitions, characteristics, principles and methodological ideas about scenarios. It has been suggested that a pressing need for the future of scenarios is amongst other things, to resolve the confusion over ‘the definitions and methods of scenarios’. This paper makes a beginning at this need by tracing the origins and growth of scenarios and the subsequent evolution of the various methodologies; a classification of the methodologies into three main schools of techniques is given and the salient features of these schools are compared and contrasted.     

Exploring client scenarios associated with scenario planning

All scenario planning projects have a ‘client’ and one of the most challenging tasks facing a scenario planner is the client's role or position in the way projects are conceptualized, delivered and received. The scenario planner has to establish and manage a ‘successful client relationship’—but what actually constitutes that for a scenario planning project?The client acts as the conduit between the scenario planner and the organization for which the scenario planning project is being undertaken.The ‘client as conduit’ implies several challenges for the scenario planner including:

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The client's awareness and understanding of scenario planning as a method for their organization to learn from the future [1].

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The client's level of commitment to learning from the future.

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The size and context of the scenario planning project.

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The position of the client within a network of people and/or resources required to run a scenario planning project.

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The client's involvement or position within the scenario building team created in the project.

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The benefits and risks accruing to the client through the execution of the scenario planning project.

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The client organization's capacity to act strategically; its power to perform.

This paper will explore, through storytelling, different pictures of client relationships associated with scenario planning. The stories are developed from a deep and extensive well of scenario practitioner and consulting experience over the last 15 years to explore and discuss these client issues, and how clients for scenario planning projects have evolved, and how they may enhance or restrict scenario planning projects in the future.     

Scenario planning at business unit level

The scenario planning literature is focused on corporate level interventions. There is a general consensus on the method, but there is little debate about the stages involved in building and using the scenarios. This article presents a case study of a scenario planning intervention, which was conducted at a business unit of the British division of one of the largest beauty and cosmetic products multinationals. The method adopted in this case study has some fundamental differences to the existing models used at corporate level. This research is based on the principles of autoethnography, since its purpose is to present self-critical reflections, enhanced by reflective and reflexive conversations on a scenario planning method used at business unit level. The critical reflections concern a series of critical incidents which distinguish this method from existing intuitive logic scenario planning models which are used at corporate level planning. Ultimately this article contributes to the scenario planning method literature by providing insights into its practice at business unit level.     

Accommodating or compromising change? A story about ambitions and historic deterministic scenarios

Despite the basic idea of scenarios as providing a heuristic for identifying, understanding and responding to changed conditions, many scenario studies are criticized for treating the future as an incremental continuation of the past. To understand this discrepancy between theoretical ambitions and actual practice with regard to accommodating change we followed professional futurists around. We observed that futurist curtail and slice time and we identified two temporal repertoires that inhibit different views on how (academic) knowledge about past and present is used in assessing the future: historic determinism and futuristic difference. Our empirically informed analysis is a story about ambitions in line with the futuristic difference, the re-introduction and rise of historic determinism and finally the fall of futuristic difference. Our analysis of foresight in action and foresight output yields that the retreat to historic determinism is a major pitfall for futurists in general. Our story suggest that the futures studies community needs to develop and encourage more adequate responses to the ‘siren’ of historic determinism. Practitioners who aim to employ futuristic difference throughout the foresight endeavour would then be better equipped to succeed in their ambitions.     

Connecting adaptation and strategy: The role of evolutionary theory in scenario planning

In this study, evolutionary theory is used to analyze and critique the strategic process of scenario planning. We argue that scenario planning can be strengthened as a theory- and practice-oriented process through the incorporation of evolutionary theory in the scenario narrative process, and in the subsequent implementation phases in response to environmental change. First, this paper addresses scenario planning in relation to theoretical perspectives on strategic planning and forecasting. Then, the concepts of variation, selection, retention, organizational learning and inertia are used to analyze scenario planning as a strategic process. This study argues that because scenario planning mirrors modes of variation and selection at the organizational level, evolutionary theory is a useful approach for assessing the plausibility of scenario narratives and strengthening the theoretical foundation of scenario planning as a process. By utilizing an evolutionary framework throughout the scenario planning process, this method has a better chance of encouraging exploratory strategic thinking without reinforcing non-blind variation or inertial practices. Concepts including inertia can also be used to better address bias and myopia in the scenario planning process. Additionally, evolutionary theory can be used to assess how entities learn from the outcomes of scenario planning as the environment changes over time.     

Tourism at Costalegre,Mexico: An ecosystem services-based exploration of current challenges and alternative futures

Tourism, as all human activities, is dependent on the natural environment and its respective ecosystem services (ES). Different user groups manage and consume these touristic ES differently, resulting in discrepancies and potential conflicts. Despite the urgency to find inclusive local approaches for sustainable development, tourism studies still analyze socio-economic and ecological impacts separately and lack integrated social–ecological approaches to improve foresight in tourism planning. Based on a growing concern regarding the future of Costalegre on the Jalisco coast of Western Mexico, we analyze through interviews, surveys, and participant observation the dependence of tourism on specific ecosystem services and conduct a scenario analysis which shows present and future implications for the social–ecological system. Furthermore, this analysis shows in detail how different scenarios change ES provision and people's livelihoods. Key findings include identifying freshwater provision and cultural ES as the most important touristic ES. At a regional scale, peasants in ejidos are the main ES stewards, whereas high-class tourism facilities constitute important local stewards. Benefits, mainly access to freshwater and the beach, are unequally distributed, provoking conflicts among different ES user groups that may escalate in the near future. Improved communication between all user groups and strengthening of key political actors seem to be the most immediate recommendations to ensure the long term sustainability of this particular region. This work may contribute to improved planning and decision-making as our ES based scenarios are a first step to integrate social–ecological knowledge into improved decision-making. At a local scale, the study reveals the most likely future development options and their social and ecological consequences. It could also serve as a baseline for informed policy making.