Normative or Explorative Scenarios? Use the “Control Compass” to Find Out
If you are familiar with scenario planning — here intended in the inclusive sense, i.e. intuitive logics scenarios as well as alternative futures approaches — or with futures and foresight in general, you might have heard that scenarios can be either explorative or normative, but what do those two terms even mean? and how do we decide whether we should do the former or the latter in a specific futures and foresight project?
This article will try to make some clarity on the difference between these two terms, and it will share some advice on how to decide between the two approaches using a simple “organizational diagnostic” tool called the control compass, that I’ve been using informally in my consulting work.
What Explorative and Normative Scenarios Are
Unfortunately, the terms “explorative scenarios” and “normative scenarios” have not been codified, as it is often the case in futures and foresight. Yet a common viewpoint is that while explorative scenarios are scenarios showing…
