3.2.2 Questions about scenario selection

Not every scenario provides answers to every question that is asked concerning the future.
Possible topics that can be queried are society, values, customers, corporate structure, positioning, procurement or globalization. 

A scenario cannot cover the entire future; you cannot predict and consider everything at once. It is advisable to focus on one or two aspects in order to work on them with a sufficient degree of detail to achieve the greatest possible informational value.

In the Words of Module 2: Within which area of life will the foresight exercise take place?
(Including the industry, sector, or issue area of focus, as well as relevant social, economic, technological, environmental, and political factors.) 

Possible questions that a scenario can answer are: 

• Who will my customers be in X years? How will my company be situated in 30 years?
• Will my company still be selling/producing/developing the same thing in X years, a further development or something completely different?
• Which markets will I be cultivating in X years?
• What will the technology in my industry look like in X years?
• What structures will my company have and what will the working day look like in X years?

Scenarios and associated methods are categorized differently in the literature, answering different basic questions and approaching the future differently .   

A distinction is made between (Balula & Bina, 2013): 

• predictive → What will happen? Forecasting likely future developments based on current trends, Future states based on data-driven predictions.
• explorative → What can happen? Identifying a range of possible outcomes, fostering creativity, “What if” scenarios that explore a variety of potential futures.
• normative → What should happen? Guiding vision, setting ideal goals, norma setting, Idealized scenarios where the focus is on what should happen.

Consider which approach would answer your future question the best?
Which would be most compelling, interesting or relevant to read for stakeholders?

As said in the Defining scenario section, a scenario is never alone, there is always a set.

Depending on the contents and the overarching question as well as time and other resources, different numbers of scenarios are possible. Experts recommend creating 3 or 4 scenarios (Inayatullah, 2008).

“Each scenario plot or logic should be different, yet relevant to the focal question” (Ogilvy & Schwartz, 1998).

Possible distinctions between scenarios in a set are:

•  ‘more of the same’, ‘technological fix’, ‘edge of disaster’ and ‘sustainable development’ (Amer et al., 2013)
• scenario archetypes: continued growth, collapse, steady state and transformation (Dator, 1979 after Amer et al. 2013)
• Evolution and Progress, Collapse, Gaia, Globalism, Back to the Future (Inayatullah, 2008) 
• four variables:
  • best case (where the organization desires to move towards)
  • worst case (where everything goes bad)
  • outlier (a surprise future based on a disruptive emerging issue) 
  • business as usual (no change) 

Any combination of these: Winners/Losers, Crisis and Response, Good News/Bad News, Evolutionary Change, Revolution, Tectonic Change, Cycles, Infinite Possibility, The Lone Ranger, Generations, Perpetual Transition (Ogilvy & Schwartz, 1998)

No matter how you try, your own assumptions about the future, worldview and understanding of interrelationships and “how the world works” play an unconscious role in creating scenarios, since they inevitably influence your view of the future.

According to Inayatullah (2008), there are the following basic views on how the future plays out:

• There are hinge periods in human history, when the action of a few can make a dramatic difference. […]
  What succeeded before no longer works now. We are likely in this phase now.
• The future is linear, stage like, with progress ahead. By hard work, we will realize the good future. 
• The future is cyclical, there are ups and downs. Those at the top will one day find themselves at the bottom. Because they are on the top, they are unable to adapt and adjust as the world changes. Their success was based on mastery of yesterday’s conditions. Few are able to reinvent their basic values.
• The future is spiral – parts are linear and progress based, and parts are cyclical. With courageous leadership and foresight a positive spiral can be created. The dogmas of the past are challenged but the past is not disowned, rather it is integrated in a march toward a better future.
• New futures are driven by a creative minority. They challenge the notion of a used future. Instead of imitating what everyone else is doing, they innovate. This can be social, political, cultural, spiritual or technological innovation. These change agents imagine a different future, and inspire others to work toward it. When there is no creative minority, instead of sustainable systems what results are bigger and bigger empires and world-states. Power and bureaucracy continue unchallenged, charisma becomes routinized and the hunger for something different, that can better meet human needs, drifts away. Size or growth takes over, inner and outer development disappear.

Inayatullah (2008) has set out the following six basic questions.
It is useful to be aware of one’s own answers in order to possibly work on them and recognize when they might taint a future or otherwise influence scenarios in a overly subjective way.

What do you think the future will be like? What is your prediction? More and more progress and wealth? Wealth for the view? A dramatic technological revolution? Environmental catastrophe? Why?

1. Which future are you afraid of? Random acts of violence? Do you think you can transform this future to a desired future? Why or why not? 
2. What are the hidden assumptions of your predicted future? Are there some taken-for-granted assumptions (about gender, or nature or technology or culture, or …)? 
3. What are some alternatives to your predicted or feared future? If you change some of your assumptions, what alternatives emerge? 
4. What is your preferred future? Which future do you wish to become reality for yourself or your organization?
5. And finally, how might you get there? What steps can you take to move in toward your preferred future?
   As it says in ancient Buddhist texts, much of the solution to the challenge of life is simply in being pointed in the right direction.
6. Also consider:  How does your company view itself? “youthful or mature? A tiger or an elephant? As well as, how does the organization imagine the future?
   Does your organization believe the future is random; or that you are rushing down a rapid stream with rocks all around; or the future is like a game of snakes and ladders; or like a family? “