Description
Book SynopsisIs your business ready for the future? Scenario planning is a fascinating, yet still underutilized, business tool that can be of immense value to a company's strategic planning process. It allows companies to visualize the impact that a portfolio of possible futures could have on their competitiveness.
Table of ContentsIntroduction 1
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 finish, 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.
