From Scenarios to Strategy: Top Three Methods

Moving from scenarios to strategy is an important but often not fully understood link. Indeed, a lot of organizational foresight work stops after the creation of scenarios, while in reality scenarios should be used to change or improve strategy. This link is problematic for several reasons. Lack of appropriate communication between the scenario team and the right level of management, halting of monetary resources during the scenario planning process, limits of time, etc. are all exogenous factors that may affect the transfer of knowledge from scenarios to strategy. However, perhaps the most detrimental factor is endogenous, i.e. an inherent lack of structured and rigorous methodology to enable scenarios to be fruitfully used for decision making.

Thus, in this article I will attempt to provide some methodological guidance for futures and foresight practitioners by discussing three methods that I personally found to be excellent to translate scenarios into strategy, along with their strengths and limitations. Some guidelines about their application will then follow. I consider the case of corporate foresight, although these methods can also be applied, with little or no change, to governmental foresight. Also, these methods apply to explorative scenario planning rather than to normative scenario planning. To learn more about the difference between the two, see this…