Scenario confusions

Been having some interesting discussions about scenarios lately and think we might have a few blog posts brewing here. To kick it off, let’s start with a couple of “confusions” still with us that Peter Bishop, Terry Collins, and I identified in our 2007 paper “The Current State of Scenario Development.” 

1. Perhaps the most common confusion when discussing scenarios is equating scenario development with scenario planning. “Scenario planning’’ has more to do with a complete foresight study, where scenario development is concerned more specifically with creating actual stories about the future. Scenario planning is a far more comprehensive activity, of which scenario development is one aspect. Mixing these two up continues to be an issue in discussions about scenarios
2. A more subtle confusion is equating the term ‘‘scenario’’ with ‘‘alternative future.’’ In other words, all descriptions of alternative futures are deemed to be scenarios. A more narrow definition of scenario would focus only on stories about alternative futures. With this narrow definition, other forecasting methods might produce alternative futures, but not scenarios. In practice, however, the broader definition of scenario as alternative future, whether they are in story form or not, has prevailed. Thus, the complete collection of methods for scenario development includes almost all forecasting methods since they also produce alternative futures. In fact, very little is said about the actual creation of the stories in most methods. More attention is paid to generating the scenario kernel or logic, which can be done by any number of methods.

We decided that it did not make sense to fight the battle for a narrower definition, and thus our list of methods was based on current practice and included the incorporation of forecasting methods whether or not they produce a story. Thus, if one is disenchanged with scenario development, this does not suggest that they must also abandon the concept of alternative futures. It was this possibility that I personally most feared when we wrote the piece, that is, because scenarios had taken on a larger role than perhaps they really “should” have, if people became disenchanted with scenarios, it would harm the concept of alternative futures…which is central to what we do.

So, our first step is to agree on terms: scenario development produces stories; scenario planning is a comprehensive approach to foresight approaches, and there are more ways to produce alternative futures than just scenarios.

Andy Hines