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This content was archived in October 2014

About this guide

  • Published: 20 February 2008
  • Updated: 2 October 2012

View full guide as a single page

Contents

Scenario planning
  • The evolution of scenario planning
  • Potential uses
  • Successful scenario planning
  • Scenario sets
  • How to: a step-by-step guide
    • Scoping
    • Trend analysis
    • Building scenarios
    • Generate options
    • Test options
    • Action plan
  • Applying creativity to the scenario process
    • Brainstorming
    • News headlines
    • Thinking the unthinkable
    • Metaphors and stories
    • Sources of inspiration
    • 'Personal lives': profiling target groups
    • Timeline
  • Moving forward
  • Acknowledgements and references

This technique utilises a story-telling approach to help participants test scenario plausibility and by considering the timeline, and to get buy-in by addressing the question ‘how could this happen?’.

Creative Commons attribution information
Image – Certainty Matrix

Activity plan

  • Ask participants to identify the biggest differences between the current world and the future scenario (two to three minutes)
  • Participants then explain the change, identifying three to five causes for each change (answering questions like ‘why does the majority buy expensive ecological food?’) (five to ten minutes)
  • Select the main causes from the group of causes (five to ten minutes)
  • Identify common causes and repeat the process of answering appropriate questions (five to ten minutes)
  • Draw a draft timeline (ten minutes)
  • Finish the timeline using colourful (tabloid) paper headlines (optional) with a short explanation (ten minutes)
  • An additional step could involve plotting the identified events onto a certainty matrix (the vertical axis running from ‘certain to occur’ down to ‘uncertain to occur’ and the horizontal range from low impact to high impact).

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