Scenario Planning A Field Guide to the Future

WOODY WADE heads Wade & Co., a management consultancy focused on business foresight, and frequently speaks on the topic of future trends. With an MBA from Harvard Business School, he has more than thirty years of business experience, specifically in international marketing and strategy development. He has worked for two Swiss private banks; served as a member of the executive board of the Geneva-based World Economic Forum; and was the marketing director of the world-renowned Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne.

Albert Einstein may have been a great scientist, but if he’d been a businessman, he’d have lost his job.

CHAPTER 1 ESCAPING THE TYRANNY OF THE PRESENT 6

Conventional forecasting and projections won’t help you see much beyond next Tuesday. Scenario planning, on the other hand, won’t nail down the future, either, but there is no such thing as the future, anyway, so that’s all right. Instead, by helping you explore alternative futures, scenario planning will help you see what could happen, so you’ll be better prepared to deal with it.

CHAPTER 2 HOW-TO 26

Start to fi nish, here’s how the process works. (You’ll still want an expert facilitator. My e-mail is wade@11changes.com.)

CHAPTER 3 CASE STUDIES: THE REAL WORLD 64

These four organizations used scenario planning to explore how the future might unfold for a country, an economic sector, an industry, and a company.

CHAPTER 4 BLACK SWANS 140

History turns on events that are extremely rare yet have huge consequences. The same is probably true of your company’s future.

CHAPTER 5 ARE YOU READY? 156

Most books about the future are full of predictions. “Just you watch: This will happen.” This book isn’t. Instead, it poses some questions about what could happen.

POSTSCRIPT THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE 186

A failure of imagination can have tragic results.

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