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.     

Can internally generated futures accelerate organizational learning?

After many years of scenario planning, this paper takes a moment to reflect on its use within, and value to, organizations. The author states that ultimately the benefit of scenario planning must result from ‘changed and more skilful action by the organization within its business environment.’ Navigating through the business environment is discussed as taking on two forms, that of strategising and learning where the former is dominated by ‘knowing by gaining control’ and the latter by ‘knowing by participation’ and reflection. Taking this logic a step further, van der Heijden sees the purpose of scenario planning as being categorisable along two dimensions content/process and thinking/action producing a matrix of four categories of purpose. Although he sees these four reasons for using scenario planning as harbouring different degrees of difficulty and likelihood of success, he advocates above all that organizations think carefully about which category is appropriate for them and ensure that the process of scenario planning is designed to support this goal.     

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 critical role of history in scenario thinking: Augmenting causal analysis within the intuitive logics scenario development methodology

The historian Eric Hobsbawm stated that ‘The safest empirical generalization about history is still that nobody heeds its obvious lessons much’. Whether at a macroeconomic level or within individual organisations there are numerous examples of this, such as the economic crash of 2008, the causes of which had many parallels with those that caused the great depression 80 years previously. On the other hand however, overly-relying on the past as a guide to the future has its own obvious dangers—not least that important future events may have no past precedent. As such, the present paper firstly provides a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using the past as a guide to the future. It then examines the role of history in scenario work, arguing that history should receive greater emphasis as part of the scenario planning process. We suggest changes to the standard Intuitive Logics (IL) approach to scenario planning which would render learning from history a more central component of the scenario process, in contrast to its current peripheral role. Rather than diminishing scenario planning’s ability to facilitate a consideration of how the future may differ from the past, we show how a greater emphasis on history can enhance consideration of the causality of future change. An adapted IL that has more emphasis on historical analysis can augment scenario planning’s effectiveness as a tool for consideration of the future.     

Testing the rhetoric: An approach to assess scenario planning's role as a catalyst for urban policy integration

Policy integration has become a high-priority objective for urban planning and management. At the same time, the transportation and urban planning fields have increasingly employed scenario planning approaches, not only to develop long-term strategy, but also—potentially—to strengthen organizational networks and encourage collaborative action. Yet these latter supposed outcomes of scenario planning remain under-theorized and largely untested. In this study, we propose a methodology, based on established theories of collaboration, to test the ability of a particular type of scenario planning to encourage collaboration between participants. We demonstrate the approach using a scenario planning process undertaken within the transportation and urban planning community in Portugal. The pre-/post-test experimental design uses a survey designed to assess participants’ propensity for future collaboration by measuring change in individuals’ perceptions and understandings. The results suggest that the process likely modestly increased participants’ propensity to collaborate, primarily by strengthening inter-agency networks. The effects on participants’ views and understanding remain inconclusive. We suggest that specific challenges in applying this specific scenario planning approach to public sector contexts may limit the method's potential in achieving inter-organizational collaboration. Nonetheless, only more widespread efforts to formally test the scenario planning rhetoric will reveal the true impacts on organization change.     

Evaluating the use of an integrated forest land-use planning approach in addressing forest ecosystem services conflicting demands: Experience within an Irish forest landscape

There is an increasing demand for genuine public participation in Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) planning to address the various demands for forests to deliver a range of ecosystem services. However, as of yet, there are few developed and tested mechanisms to help authorities and stakeholders with diverse interests to effectively work together to reach a common goal. Integrated Forest Land-Use Planning (IFLUP) is an approach that has the potential to accommodate multi-stakeholders’ demands in the field of SFM planning. In this paper an IFLUP framework process that facilitates stakeholder participation in future-oriented SFM planning is explored. This framework combines scenario analysis and stakeholder collaborative learning. Its application in a case study area in the West of Ireland is outlined and its effectiveness in accommodating conflicting stakeholder demands on forest ecosystem services as well as its potential opportunities and challenges are evaluated.Based on the results and participants evaluation feedback of the IFLUP workshop outcomes, there was a shared view that the IFLUP approach has potential to address conflicting societal demands on forest ecosystem services within local forest landscapes. Likewise, collaborative learning process helps build trust and respect among stakeholder groups as well as improving the legitimacy and acceptance of SFM planning outcomes.     

Scenarios to challenge strategic paradigms: Lessons from 2025

As a process looking for alternative visions of environment and corporate futures, scenario planning challenges strategic paradigms. In that way, scenario planning is dealing with the different beliefs of the many actors who make the organization and its global and business environments. Among these beliefs, emerging ideologies are one of the main shaping factors for the construction of new visions of corporate environment and corporate futures. To analyse the interaction between scenario planning and emerging ideologies, this paper will first propose a conceptual framework based on the dynamics of strategic paradigms. Second, it will discuss Electricité de France 2025 scenarios longitudinal case study in the context of the diffusion process of the French so called prospective approach to show interests and traps of scenario planning to manage paradigm shifts.     

From transformative outcome based education to blended learning

This paper examines the transformative effects of outcome based education within the process of a music curriculum review. Effective collaborative engagements among team members resulted in strengthened curricula with evidence of a reflective implementation of outcome focused course delivery. The study further identified challenges faced by faculty members in adapting the reviewed curricula to suit online learning. It ascertained the levels of faculty understanding as to what was ‘blended learning’ and their preparedness in modifying various conventional courses to be offered under a blended learning mode. Emergent issues were analysed. A User-Learner Centred Design model was created to facilitate programme transformation and outcome-based scenario planning for future development of quality blended learning curricula.     

Scenarios and the art of worldmaking

In this exploratory paper we propose ‘worldmaking’ as a framework for pluralistic, imaginative scenario development. Our points of departure are the need in scenario practice to embrace uncertainty, discomfort and knowledge gaps, and the connected need to capture and make productive fundamental plurality among understandings of the future. To help respond to these needs, we introduce what Nelson Goodman calls worldmaking. It holds that there is no singular, objective world (or “real reality”), and instead that worlds are multiple, constructed through creative processes instead of given, and always in the process of becoming. We then explore how worldmaking can operationalise discordant pluralism in scenario practice by allowing participants to approach not only the future but also the present in a constructivist and pluralistic fashion; and by extending pluralism to ontological domains. Building on this, we investigate how scenario worldmaking could lead to more imaginative scenarios: worldmaking is framed as a fully creative process which gives participants ontological agency, and it helps make contrasts, tensions and complementarities between worlds productive. We go on to propose questions that can be used to operationalize scenario worldmaking, and conclude with the expected potential and limitations the approach, as well as suggestions for practical experimentation.     

An examination of future scenarios using historical analogy

The quality of scenario planning activities can be difficult to assess, as one cannot know how likely any projected future scenario is. Here, we introduce one approach for gaining greater confidence. Historical analogy provides the means for achieving this, whereby the model upon which scenarios are constructed is analysed in terms of how well it predicts and establishes links with recent historical environments. We apply this approach to a previously developed scenario tree, constructed using the field anomaly relaxation method, as a case study to indicate how historical analogy can be used to assess and enhance the model from which the scenarios are constructed.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Exploring the relationship between scenario planning and perceptions of learning organization characteristics

This article attempts to verify some assumptions evident in the scenario planning literature through the application of quantitative measures. The Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire is used to measure participant perceptions of the learning organization characteristics pre- and post-scenario planning intervention. Results are discussed, limitations are identified and clarified, and conclusions are drawn with speculations and refinements for future research.     

Managing group processes in transdisciplinary future studies: How to facilitate social learning and capacity building for self-organised action towards sustainable urban development?

Challenges for future urban development are complex and characterised by ambiguous problem definitions or unclear, conflicting and dynamically changing goals. Transdisciplinary research promises new ways of dealing with uncertainty and complexity by including non-academic actors into the research process and fostering social learning for better and more effective research. Depending on the level of participation and the number and heterogeneity of actors involved, appropriate designs for group processes but also associated skills are essential. In this article, we scrutinise the dynamics of groups to better understand how to effectively promote social learning and capacity building for selforganised action beyond project enc. Based on experiences of a participatory scenario planning process in the city of Korneuburg and substantiated with theories on groups and their development, we conclude with five propositions emphasising researchers’ responsibility in processes of societal change, the role of external facilitators, the scope and time needed for group building, the acknowledgement of various phases of group processes as well as requirements for social learning.     

Multiple pasts, converging presents, and alternative futures

This paper introduces a variant of scenario planning, supported by some related new concepts in futures studies. The traditional snapshot and chain portrayals of scenarios are replaced by a network, which enables the consideration of multiple views of the present and the past, occurring in multiple systems (e.g. global and local). A fractal “leaf of goals” metaphor is developed, illustrating the argument that activities, events and objectives lie on a continuum: any one event is itself a composite of an indefinite number of component events.Using this concept, network scenarios are developed, consisting of nodes (representing events) and links (representing influences). Because events are socially constructed, each node can be seen as an end-state summary of a smaller network scenario. The networks are created (typically in workshops with participants from the systems being studied) using modified versions of the futures wheel and backcasting, as well as a new variant entitled middlecasting. By working iteratively between past and future events, the networks are steadily refined.A further departure from conventional scenario planning is that scenario networks do not begin at the present time, but extend about as far into the past as they do into the future. By beginning in the past, the roots of network fragments can be identified more clearly in the context of their multiple presents.The method is illustrated with an example of a project to democratize public radio in Indonesia. A scenario network was successfully created, but the delineation of multiple pasts and presents turned out to need further clarification.     

City foresight and development planning case study: Implementation of scenario planning in formulation of the Bulungan development plan

This article discusses the formulation of the Bulungan Development Plan (2002) that sought to formulate a 25 year city vision. The foresight process included how to prepared the process, implemented the scenario planning method, created consensus amongst stakeholders, and formulated graphic and narrative scenarios that explored alternative future for Bulungan. Based on these scenarios, the stakeholders formulated a vision for the city's preferred future. The vision is “excellence in agro industry supported by qualified human resources”.Project debriefing showed that unlike traditional forecasting or market research, the methods of foresight, especially scenario planning, is a more appropriate and powerful planning tool for integrated regional development. The main reason for this is that the future is unpredictable, and scenarios allow stakeholders to make sense of complexity.     

First steps: towards purposeful activities in scenario thinking and future studies

In this paper, we contribute to the understanding of the field of scenario development and future studies, which has been a key debate in Futures over the past three of four years. Our contribution is less on the philosophical issues surrounding future studies, but more on the hurdles faced by those interested in practising in the area of scenario planning and future studies. The issues presented and discussed in this article arise from a number of action learning research projects that we have conducted with small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) in Scotland, who have embraced scenario development for the first time as part of their strategic management and learning process.Our contribution is targeted at identifying and understanding the hurdles to be overcome when (such) organisations consider adopting scenario development or future studies. The contribution is designed to first, help those in the field of scenario development and future studies be mindful of these hurdles and to build a trusting relationship between the scenario practioner and the client, and secondly, help those managers willing to engage in such activities to better understand the purpose of such work.First we identify three key hurdles: (a) organisational culture (i.e. tacit assumptions on scenario development and future studies); (b) “client” state of mind; (c) fear of engaging with the outside/fear of the future. We argue that these hurdles are a serious threat to the relevance and effectiveness of futures work. We argue that these hurdles need to be better understood as a basis for improving the impact and contribution that scenario development and future studies can make.Later in this article we propose a framework to help understand the purpose of scenario development or future studies work. This framework can be used at the outset of any engagement or study, to help the “client” to identify the purpose of such work and to understand its role and scope. We argue that this framework contributes to more purposeful, relevant and actionable scenario development and future studies in the future.Unless you changed something in the minds of managers, a scenario project had failed (Harvard Bus. Rev. 63(6) (1985) 139). Going one-step further, we would argue that unless something tangible happens as the result of the scenario development and future studies work, we have wasted our time.     

Metropolitan vision making – using backcasting as a strategic learning process to shape metropolitan futures

The need for new forward-looking tools in urban planning is immense: new functional relations and structures are now stretching beyond our capacity to ‘rationally’ capture modern metropolitan spaces (Neumann & Hull, 2009). At the same time, cities struggle to find tools to help manage their long-term transition towards a low-carbon, resource-smart economy.In 2006–2007, the municipalities in the Helsinki metropolitan region organised an international competition for ideas titled “Greater Helsinki Vision 2050.” It drew a good number of entries in the competition stage and later helped bring together the awarded participants with local planning professionals and citizens.This paper explores the process behind the vision-making exercise and evaluates its success in providing new tools for the long-term transition to a low-carbon, resource-smart Helsinki metropolitan region. The theoretical framework used in this paper is ‘incrementalism with perspective’ (Ganser, Siebel & Sieverts, 1993) and its ideas on using long-term visions in the integration and coordination of incremental activities in various institutions. We perceive the backcasting scenario method (Dreborg, 1996) as a tool for implementing this approach and hence interpret the case example’s results through the framework of this method.The Greater Helsinki Vision 2050 competition was an example of a vision-oriented planning process that provided new tools for bringing the ‘unmanageable’ metropolitan region within the scope of the manageable. The backcasting approach was deployed as a tool for emancipating stakeholders to imagine alternative futures for metropolitan spaces.The backcasting scenario method should be considered a viable tool when managing vision-oriented planning processes: longer than usual time horizons help initiate strategic learning among stakeholders. However, in addition to civil servants, citizens and other stakeholders should be widely engaged in order to secure sustainable results.     

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.