Anticipating the future has been a major preoccupation for people from the beginning of time. Creating scenarios as a way to anticipate the future has been popularized in recent decades. We engage in developing scenarios to increase awareness about possible outcomes and to understand the potential costs, benefits and consequences of any decision or action we may take.

In a business context, scenario-based planning is a creative, open-ended exploration of patterns that might emerge in your field. In our Future Scenarios Workshop we help executives anticipate and prepare for the future by exercising their ability to think about opportunities and challenges in context of what may happen in the next month, the next year, or in longer term. It is a discovery process to help you evaluate uncertainties, triggers and the important forces that have the power to affect the future.

The value and benefits of developing your future scenarios for your organization are multiple:

1. You increase awareness to the range of plausible futures.
2. You challenge your assumptions.
3. You prepare and rehearse responses to specific scenarios.
4. You develop a framework for continued environmental scanning.
5. You create future options for your organization.
6. You identify specific decision points and triggers.
7. You cultivate in-depth understanding and insight about the inter-relationships of active forces in your eco-system.
8. You create a context with which to monitor and evaluate change.
9. You develop analytical tools to support strategic decisions.
10. You engage in a creative process that unleashes and forwards innovation.

© Aviv Shahar