THE SCENARIOS QUESTION by Andrew Curry Andrew Curry, the cenarios work is one of the distinctive Travelled,” Wendy Schultz and I explored four: can be produced by any and all of the specific editor of this book, practices of futures. In the minds of many the double uncertainty method, popularized by methods used by futurists.” has led scores of it is associated strongly with the 2x2 ‘double Peter Schwartz’ book, The Art of the Long View; The Art of the Long View scenarios projects S uncertainty’ matrix, in which ‘important’ future two methods used by the University of Hawai’i using a range of This leaves us still with the question of why, uncertainties are compressed into two significant futures school, Futures Archetypes and Manoa; different approaches, when there are so many ways of producing themes of uncertainty, and a set of scenarios and Causal Layered Analysis, invented by Sohail and has written about scenarios, the double uncertainty method has developed by exploring the worlds which emerge Inayatullah, himself a Hawai’i alumnus. And scenarios methods. become so dominant. The answer seems to lie in by combining the different outcomes. beyond these, the list stretches down the hall. a moment of publishing history. Peter Schwartz, However, this method wasn’t always a The French prospective school has its own scenario who had run the Shell scenarios team through dominant model, and it is worth exploring how development techniques, and Morphological much of the 1980s and had left to set up the it came to be so. Futures work is a relatively Scenarios (also known as Field Anomaly futures consultancy Global Business Network in young discipline, and hasn’t yet developed its Relaxation, or FAR) have a long history. ‘Pathway’ 1987, published his book The Art of the Long View equivalent of historiography, the branch of history scenarios methods have been widely used; in 1991. The book itself is more about approach which looks at why particular views of history ‘trilemma’ models exist; and there are scenario than method, and several of the scenarios projects attained prominence at particular times. In this development methods based on soft systems described in it use other techniques, rather than essay, I am going to take a look at the history of modeling. Several of these are documented in the the 2x2 double uncertainty method. However, as I scenarios practice through the lens of a nascent Millennium Project’s Futures Research Methods 3.0. understand the publishing history, the 2x2 method ‘futurography’ to understand the evolution of Even this list is far from complete. Close to two was codified and added as an appendix by his GBN different scenarios practice at different times. dozen methods are listed in the 2007 paper, “The colleague Jay Ogilvy. The method has a number of Current State of Scenarios Methods,” by Peter A Multiplicity of Methods virtues, principally that it appears straightforward Bishop, Andy Hines, and Terry Collins, although Scenarios can be defined as a group of stories and produces a clear visual representation of a range some of those listed are visioning techniques. which together describe a range of possible of futures. It is, of course, also highly dependent on Philip van Notten has covered similar ground and coherent future worlds for a given domain the quality of the initial framing question, and of (with colleagues), as has Dennis List. Different or system. There is no shortage of scenario the analysis that takes the work from the scanning methods have their strengths and weaknesses. The building methods. In our article, “Roads Less stage to the identification of the matrix axes. point is, as Wendell Bell observes, that “scenarios 11 At the time, futures work was in something of a lull. The long boom of the ‘80s, and the end SOUTH AFRICA’S MONT FLEUR scenarios of the Cold War, meant that people were less YES FLIGHT OF THE FLAMINGOES anxious about the future than they had been. Inclusive democracy and growth Schwartz, who was (and is) dynamic, charismatic, and well-connected, constructed GBN in a way Are the government’s policies sustainable? NO that was bound to create attention. He was based ICARUS in California – associated in the 1990s with the Macro-economic populism YES emerging digital wave; he attracted associates such as Stewart Brand and Brian Eno who were famous Is the transition NO in their own right, and conveyed the strong rapid and decisive? LAME DUCK message that GBN was not just another business Incapacitated government futures house; and he developed a relationship YES with Wired, the house magazine of Silicon Figure Is a settlement Valley, which in the ‘90s was one of the hottest NO The Mont Fleur negotiated? OSTRICH publishing properties in the world. Schwartz’s Scenarios. Non-representative government timing was also impeccable, for Pierre Wack’s now (Source: Adapted from Deeper News, famous articles in the Harvard Business Review in CURRENT NEGOTIATIONS GBN, and UNEP.) the mid-1980s had rekindled corporate interest in scenarios methods. None of this should be taken as a criticism. At Jay Ogilvy had joined GBN directly from SRI, and For its part, Shell has been agnostic about a time when futures work had lost its way, GBN Schwartz had worked there before he went to Shell. methods. Pierre Wack’s original oil price scenarios reinvigorated it. His book, when it came out, was There is an antecedent to the ‘double uncertainty’ told their story through a set of pathways, as Art immediately influential (it is one of the APF’s model at SRI, in its ‘scenario parameter matrix’ Kleiner explains in his counter-cultural business history, The Age of Heretics, and were developed Most Important Futures Works: see panel). It associated with Tom Mandel, which produced showed that futures had a commercial and social partly through actor analysis and role-play. four scenarios through a plot- or archetype-based value even in times of relative prosperity. The South African Mont Fleur scenarios, led framework covering optimistic, pessimistic, and The 2x2 method is sometimes described as ‘the by another Shell alumnus, Adam Kahane, were present trends extended scenarios, together with Shell approach’, with the halo this implies from also built as a set of forking paths, as he explains Shell’s use of scenarios to ride, so successfully, the one wildcard scenario. Shades of the parameter in his book Solving Tough Problems. Similarly Shell 1970’s oil price spike. In fact the method comes matrix can be seen in The Art of the Long View’s has also used ‘trilemmas’, in which three sets of from SRI, another West Coast futures consultancy. interest in ‘plots’ and stories. uncertainties are identified (even if such scenario 12 sets are sometimes 2x2x2 ‘triple uncertainties’ designed, in Kahn’s famous phrase, to help people Vacca, among others) to build repeatable methods traveling lite), and sometimes just scenario pairs, to ‘think the unthinkable.’ His method, largely to develop the ‘possible futures’ of scenarios. Even even if such an approach is usually regarded as undocumented, drew more on game theory and within Shell, according to Art Kleiner’s account, poor practice. Wack himself, though sometimes operations research, along with a dollop of ‘genius where Ted Newland and Pierre Wack enjoyed a over-credited for the Shell scenarios work, evolved forecasting’, than techniques we would today sympathetic and well-funded environment, it took his practice towards an inductive approach based associate closely with futures work. As Joseph them three attempts over several years to on deep ‘seeing’ and on the identification of the Coates has observed, “There are no Kahnian develop a set of scenarios worth sharing more ‘predetermined elements,’ also discussed at some disciples, there is no Kahnian school, there is widely. The history of success, as ever, is built on length in The Art of the Long View. Arguably the no conceptual methodological framework he a history of failures. scenarios approaches described by Kees van der developed that others follow through with.” Looking at it through this lens, it is possible Heijden are closer to Shell’s methods. There is a wider story here. It wasn’t just Kahn to believe that the success of the 2x2 method The Invention of Scenarios who had problems systematizing his methods. Roy is because it took something difficult – the Amara memorably described future work as being practice of scenario building – and simplified it Going further back into the history, Herman about preferred, possible, and probable futures, in such a way that people were confident that Kahn is generally regarded as the first person but it took practitioners some years to move from they could apply it. But is also possible to think to use the word ‘scenarios’ to describe a range the ‘genius’ approaches of Kahn and other proto- that something has been lost in this process. As of possible futures, the inspiration having futurists of the ‘60s (a group which can be thought Napier Collyns, a veteran of both Shell and GBN, come from a screenwriting friend. Much of his of as including Alvin Toffler, John McHale, Daniel put it in an interview in 2007: “In my experience, research was funded by the military and – as Bell, Lester Brown, Harrison Brown, and Roberto scenario planning is an interpretive practice – it’s is well-known – dealt with nuclear war. It was The Art of the Long View is perhaps the best uncertainty in long-term futures requiring the use of introduction to the futures field for a person who scenarios rather than single-valued predictions. It is asks, “So what do futurists do?” It comes from a full of great stories and case studies, and it contains well-known, authoritative source (Peter Schwartz).