"Thinking through scenario stories, and talking in depth about their implications, brings each person's unspoken assumptions about the future to the surface. Scenarios are thus the most powerful vehicles I know for challenging our "mental models" about the world and lifting the "blinders" that limit our creativity and resourcefulness." - Peter Schwartz

Strategic planning determines where an organization is going over the next several years, how it’s going to get there and how it’ll know if it got there or not. This is a key management exercise, regardless of whether or not it is driven by innovation.

Scenario planning helps the organization visualize the future in an ordered way so that the strategic plan is valid and likely to occur as planned.  Both strategic and scenario-based planning also allows an organization to prepare for unrealized futures.  The futures explored, and the plans developed, can be used as a road map to the future, as contingency plans for unexpected events or as event triggers for potentially damaging strings of events. 

In the innovation space, strategic and scenario planning helps define the “future state” of the organizations. It is the target to shoot at when developing new ideas for prototyping and further development activities.

Scenario planning itself revolves around a number of distinct phases:

• Preparation
  • Define the key question/problem
  • Set the duration of the analysis
  • Set the in/out scope of the analysis
  • Identify stakeholders and secure
• Research and Planning
  • Identify Trends
  • Identify Variables
  • Identify Current Forces
• Scenario Development
  • Develop 3-5 Likely Scenarios
  • Develop 3-5 Unlikely Scenarios
  • Develop 3-5 Extreme Scenarios
• Scenario Execution
  • Develop scenario progression plan
  • Develop test plan for assumptions
  • Conduct scenario exploration and mapping
    • Brainstorming
    • What If? Questioning
    • Use Trend, Variable & Current Force Data
• Scenario Outputs
  • Response/Contingency Plan Development
  • Strategy Development
  • Issue Management
  • Risk Management
  • Early Alerting & Event Trigger Identification

With 2011 and beyond strategic, portfolio and project planning already underway in some organizations, hopefully this refresher on scenario planning will help your organization think beyond the incremental, beyond the norm and beyond the expected.  Unexpected "Black Swan" events happen...just ask BP...and your organization needs to think through what potential futures may hold.  You might just discover something new to bring to the marketplace!