This document provides an introduction to scenario planning. It explains that scenarios are strategic foresight tools used to better understand complex and uncertain futures rather than to predict a single future. The scenario planning process involves identifying key influential factors and uncertainties, developing alternative assumptions about how those may unfold, and crafting narratives or pictures of different potential futures. Scenarios aim to avoid biases like linear thinking by illustrating multiple plausible futures. They also help structure group discussions to reduce biases and allow for interdisciplinary perspectives. The document outlines the typical steps in a scenario planning process.

1. Introduction to
Scenarios
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2. Introduction to Scenarios
Thank you for your participation in our scenario workshop!
This handout is for your personal use.

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We Assume Thinking About the Future is Foreknowing
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Due to selective perception ⇒
(mental models)
⇐ Due to linear extrapolation
(status quo bias; wishful
thinking)

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Foresight is the systematic thinking about uncertain
futures

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Strategic foresight is action-oriented foresight
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Scenario construction,
future studies
Foresight
Strategy development,
long-term planning
Strategic Foresight

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Scenarios are (strategic) foresight tools

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Scenarios vs. prognoses (foresights vs. forecasts)
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Prognoses Scenarios
Epistemology
Predicting, explaining a
future state
Thought experiments about future
developments
Criteria Probability Plausibility
Change Incremental Structural/fundamental
Goal
Foreknowing the future,
creating knowledge
about the future
Better understanding of complex
environment, making sense of an
uncertain futures, avoiding surprise
Approach
Context independent
information gathering
Structured group process

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• Use of scenarios: “Hygiene of Thinking”
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• Scenarios illustrate alternative developments and make
them imaginable (reduce linear thinking).
• The scenario process forces participants to
systematically review their own thinking and
perspectives.
• Reduction of blind spots
• Reduction of the bias blind spot

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• Use of scenarios: “Hygiene of Group Think”
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• Scenarios can provide focal points in complicated
discourses (avoid fragmentation/fray out).
• Reducing group think/shared information bias
• Reduce reactive devaluation
(not-invented-here-syndrome)
• The scenario process provides a platform for
structured, interdisciplinary, and intercultural group
communication.

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Approach
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1. Scoping
Topic
Focal Question
6. Scenario
Development
Pictures of the Future
Histories of the Future
7. Consequences
Goals
Opportunities and Threats
2. Environment
Scanning
Influential Factors
5. Scenario
Construction
Raw Scenarios for further
elaboration
8. Implications
Strategic Options
Robust Approach
3. Factor
Assessment
Relevant Trends
Key Uncertainties
4. Projections
Alternative Assumptions for
2030

11. Contact
Liana Lim Hinch
lh@foresightintelligence.net
Direct: +62 821 1319 5194
www.foresightintelligence.net