strategic futures planning

Strategic Futures Planning: A Guide for Public

Sector OrganisationsBy Ben Ramalingam and Harry Jones

iii

Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................vii

About the authors ....................................................................................................................vii

Executive summary ...................................................................................................................ix

Part I: Futures and Scenario Planning

Chapter 1: Introduction.............................................................................................................1What is futures planning? ....................................................................................................1The rise of futures and scenario planning in society ...............................................................1The rise of futures planning in corporations: Shell International...............................................2The rise of futures in public sector organisations and government ...........................................3Why is futures planning important?.......................................................................................5

Chapter 2: Scope and stages of organisational future projects .....................................................9Breadth and complexity .......................................................................................................9Different modes of thinking ................................................................................................10Stages and framework .......................................................................................................11

Chapter 3: Choosing futures methodologies .............................................................................15The importance of methods ...............................................................................................15Matching approaches........................................................................................................15Choosing methodologies based on outcomes .....................................................................15Choosing methodologies based on objectives .....................................................................16Choosing methodologies based on information needs .........................................................16Combining approaches .....................................................................................................17

Chapter 4: Specific methods....................................................................................................19Scenarios..........................................................................................................................19Environmental scanning/horizon scanning...........................................................................20Trend and driver analysis ...................................................................................................21Visioning ..........................................................................................................................22Backcasting ......................................................................................................................23Simulation/gaming............................................................................................................24Delphi technique...............................................................................................................25Cross-impact analysis ........................................................................................................26Roadmaps ........................................................................................................................27Wild cards ........................................................................................................................27Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)............................................................................................28Morphological analysis ......................................................................................................28

Contents

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Contents Strategic Futures Planning

Chapter 5: Good practices and common problems...................................................................31Clarifying objectives, limitations and timeframes of futures work............................................31Positioning and involvement in an organisational context .....................................................33

Part II: Case Studies

Case study one: Limits to growth..............................................................................................37The 30-Year Update ..........................................................................................................37WORLD3..........................................................................................................................38The driving force: Exponential growth .................................................................................39The limits..........................................................................................................................40Nonrenewable resources ...................................................................................................41Physical capital .................................................................................................................41The scenarios....................................................................................................................42Transitions to a sustainable world .......................................................................................43Suggested guidelines .........................................................................................................46

Case study two: The Mont Fleur scenarios ................................................................................47Context and participants ....................................................................................................47Summary of the scenarios ..................................................................................................47What the project was and was not......................................................................................48Results from the project......................................................................................................49Why the project produced these results ...............................................................................50What scenarios mean ........................................................................................................51Conditions necessary for a successful scenario effort............................................................51Conclusion .......................................................................................................................52

Case study three: Cabinet Office UK trends 2001-22006............................................................53Key UK trends: 2001-2006................................................................................................53

Case study four: The Scottish Futures Forum.............................................................................57Introduction ......................................................................................................................57The future lecture series .....................................................................................................57The ‘positive ageing’ project ..............................................................................................59Public policy debate ..........................................................................................................61Planned projects................................................................................................................62

Case study five: EC Scenarios Europe 2010 .............................................................................63Triumphant markets ...........................................................................................................63Shared responsibilities .......................................................................................................63Creative societies ..............................................................................................................64Turbulent neighbourhoods .................................................................................................64Methodology ....................................................................................................................64Two stages: partial (theme specific) scenarios and global scenarios.......................................65Production of partial scenarios ...........................................................................................65Production of global scenarios ...........................................................................................68

Case study six: The LGA Futures Toolkit ...................................................................................71The origins of Futureswork .................................................................................................71

Case study seven: The UK Climate Impacts Programme Scenarios..............................................77Introduction ......................................................................................................................77Why socio-economic scenarios are required for climate change impact assessment ...............78Approach adopted for the UKCIP socio-economic scenarios.................................................78Development of the UKCIP SES ..........................................................................................79Four futures scenarios........................................................................................................80Initial operationalisation within UKCIP.................................................................................82

Case study eight: Foresight Futures 2020 .................................................................................83Overview of the scenarios..................................................................................................83Why use futures scenarios? ................................................................................................85How can the Foresight Futures 2020 scenarios be used? .....................................................87Five keys to successful use of scenarios ...............................................................................89

Index .....................................................................................................................................93

Strategic Futures Planning Contents

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Special thanks to all those whose work has been used as a case study in this report: the Club ofRome think tank; Adam Kahane, Mont Fleur facilitator; the UK Cabinet Office; Scottish FuturesForum; the Forward Studies Unit of the European Commission; the UK’s Local GovernmentAssociation, the UK Climate Impacts Programme in the Department for Environment, Food and RuralAffairs, and the Foresight programme managed by the Office of Science and Technology.

Ben Ramalingam is a member of the Research and Policy in Development (RAPID) Programme atthe Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London. He provides strategic advice and support to awide range of international development and humanitarian agencies, from United Nationsinternational agencies to local civil society organisations. Email: [email protected]

Harry Jones is a research associate working with the Research and Policy in DevelopmentProgramme. As well as the present study, he has done work for ODI on the complexity theory andinternational development, with Plan International on disaster risk reduction and for IDRC on theOutcome Mapping methodology. Email: [email protected]

Acknowledgements

About the authors

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Strategic futures planning is ananticipatory discipline that supports and

complements organisational planning andpolicy-making processes. The success oforganisations such as Shell and of broadranging initiatives such as the Limits toGrowth study has contributed to futuresapproaches being adopted in many differentsettings and in many different kinds oforganisations, including those in the publicand not-for-profit sector. There is now anincreasing amount of work beingundertaken by public organisations onfutures issues. In a 2004 speech to civilservants, the then UK prime minister TonyBlair made explicit links between policymaking and futures approaches:

“Strategic policy making is a professionaldiscipline in itself involving serious analysisof the current state of affairs, scanningfuture trends and seeking out developmentselsewhere to generate options; and thenthinking through rigorously the steps itwould take to get from here to there.”

The report aims to provide managers,planners and strategists in public sectororganisations with more information aboutfutures planning efforts, why they are useful,and what needs to be considered in puttingtogether a futures initiative. It bringstogether practical examples from a range ofefforts, including the Club of Rome’s Limitsto Growth work in the 1960s whichidentified the global challenges facinghuman development, the Mont Fleur processwhich steered South Africa out of apartheidand into democracy, health planning futures

in the Australian state of New South Wales,and the Scottish Parliament’s ScottishFutures Forum. The groundbreaking work ofrecognised futures planning and scenarioexperts and institutions have informed andstrengthened the report. These includeindividuals such as Pierre Wack, formerly ofShell Plc, Andy Hines, formerly of DowChemical Company, and organisations suchas the Henley Management Centre and theGlobal Business Network.

Part I of the report covers the originswhere strategic futures work came from, whyit is important, how to do it, and the usefulmethods that could be considered.

Chapter One looks at the origins ofstrategic futures planning, drawing onexamples from outside the public sector suchas Shell’s groundbreaking use of scenarios inthe 1970s. The chapter also explains howfutures work is taking on growing importancefor public sector organisations, andconcludes with a four part rationale of thevalue of futures thinking.

Chapter Two explains howorganisational futures projects need to becarefully positioned in terms of their scopeand their ambitions, and the need to clarifyfrom the outset the kind of futures projectthat should be used, depending on contextand the available resources. The chaptermoves on to cover the key stages thatfutures projects should cover, and providesan initial insight into the different tools andmethodologies that can be utilised.

Chapter Three goes into more detailabout the different strategic futures tools andmethodologies, using powerful examplesfrom the UK government’s Foresight Unit to

Executive summary

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Executive summary Strategic Futures Planning

clarify what tools are most appropriate fordifferent kinds of projects. The chapterprovides a range of ways in which futurestools might be selected, ranging from thehoped-for outcomes, the kind of analysisthat would be most credible and useful, andthe kind of thinking processes that would bemost appropriate. The chapter ends with asummary of ways in which different tools canbe used in combination to strengthen theoverall futures process.

Chapter Four provides practical insightson specific methodologies, ranging fromscenarios and visions – the most famousand widely used futures tools – to less wellknown methods but equally powerful toolssuch as Delphi and Backcasting.

Chapter Five provides information aboutthe common problems faced byorganisations trying to implement futuresprojects, and provides useful tips and trickson issues as where to position futuresgroups within organisations, the appropriatetimeframe to look into the future, and howto broaden ownership of futures projects.

Part II is made up of a number of casestudies of the use of futures planning inleading public sector bodies andorganisations. These were drawn frompublicly available information about highprofile exercises, and cover methods such asscenario planning and trend analysis ondifferent issues. They include futuresinitiatives that are wide-ranging, includingan update to the Limits to Growth study, tomore specific initiatives such as the UKClimate Change Impacts programme.

Specific case studies are drawn from thefollowing organisations: the Club of Romethink tank; the South African Mont Fleurprocess; the UK Cabinet Office; ScottishFutures Forum; the European Commission’sForward Studies Unit; the UK’s LocalGovernment Association, the UK Climate

Impacts Programme in DEFRA, and theForesight programme managed by theOffice of Science and Technology.

Part I:

Futures and Scenario Planning

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What is futures planning?Thinking about and planning for the futurehas been an inherent part of human activitysince the beginning of civilisation.Traditionally, the most common way oflooking into the future was through themany different forms of divination, thepractice of attempting to discover the futurethough eliciting a divine response. Today,they seem somewhat far-fetched andincluded examining the configurations ofanimal organs and observing the patternsthat fire makes as it burns.

Since World War II there has been agrowing use of a rather more pragmatic andrational set of tools called ‘futures methods’which attempt to demystify the future in asystematic and creative manner. Themovement has led to a number of methods– the most famous of which are scenarios.Futures experts have also worked to test andprobe the plausibility of results throughdiscussion and debate. By contrast with theirhistorical roots, modern futures approachesare based on being systematic, rational andexplicit about how organisations andindividuals think about the future. Thisinvolves asking questions such as:

What procedures do we use when wethink about the future? How do we prepare to carry out ourplans and projects? What makes us successful in shaping oradapting to the coming future? At any given time, what alternativecourses of action are open to us? What will be the future consequences of choosing to do one thing rather than others?

What should we want the future to be?1

The philosophy behind futures approaches issummed up in the following quote from theInstitute of Alternate Futures:

“…trends, scenarios, visions and strategiesare an integral part of most decision-making… Their power to make decision-making ‘wise’ comes when they are madeexplicit and consciously shared to provokethought, stimulate imagination, clarifyoptions, and move people to take action…”

In order to understand the potential andvalue of futures planning for the publicsector, it is worth exploring a little more ofthe history behind it.

The rise of futures and scenario planning in society It is difficult, if not impossible, to exactlypinpoint the emergence of a new way ofthinking. As already noted, futures has rootswhich stretch back to antiquity. However, thereis general agreement that the attempt toanticipate future trends and events throughsystematic methods was developed in theUnited States during and after World War II.Techniques such as scenario-based planningwhich were used by the US military in wargames crossed into the corporate world andpublic sector bodies through the work of theworld famous think-tank, RAND Corporation.Having developed out of a military project,RAND’s futures work focused initially on thefuture of military technology, strategy andoperations, a growing concern given the onsetof the Cold War. However, the scope soonbroadened to include non-military projects.

Chapter 1: Introduction

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Chapter 1 Strategic Futures Planning

The 1950s also saw a growing movementin Europe focused on the scientific andpolitical aspects of futures planning. Thisperiod saw the set up of the Centre D’étudesProspectives (Centre for Prospective Studies)and the International Futuribles Association inParis, which still acts as a clearing house forresearch on the future. Meanwhile, theScience Policy Research Unit in the UKpioneered futures research by presentingcritiques of global models of the future as wellas attempting to create a theory of futuresresearch. In the former Eastern Bloc states,‘prognostics’ was considered a crucial processpreceding the formulation of a plan,consisting of the analysis of scientific andtechnological process and the consequencesthis may have for social progress. The late1960s saw the founding of the World FutureSociety (WFS) in the US, whose mandate wasto which investigate how ‘social, economicand technological developments were shapingthe future’ and ‘to help individuals,organisations, and communities observe,understand, and respond to social changeappropriately and effectively applyinganticipatory thinking practices’. At the sametime, the World Futures Studies Federationwas set up in Europe to promote futureseducation and research.

In 1968 the Club of Rome was initiated, athink tank which sprang to global prominencewith its project The Predicament of Mankindpublished in 1972 under the title Limits ToGrowth. Limits to Growth, which modelled theconsequences of a rapidly growing worldpopulation and finite natural resources,stimulated debate worldwide about the futureof the planet and the human population.

The rise of futures planning in corporations: Shell InternationalAround the same time that the Club ofRome was capturing global imaginations

with the Limits to Growth report, the seeds were being sown for one of the first,and almost certainly the most famous,applications of futures planning in thecontext of a specific organisation with ShellInternational2. The Shell system of scenarioplanning emerged because of the need for‘managerial assumption-smashing’. As oneof the originators, Pierre Wack, put it:

“...it [was] extremely difficult for managers tobreak out of their worldview while operatingwithin it. When they are committed to acertain way of framing an issue, it is difficultfor them to see solutions that lie outside thisframework. By presenting other ways ofseeing the world, decision scenarios allowmanagers to break out of a one-eyed view.Scenarios give managers something veryprecious: the ability to re-perceive reality...”

In the early days of their work withscenarios, Shell planners developedscenarios which simply quantified alternativeoutcomes of key uncertainties. For example,the price of oil could be $20 a barrel in a given year, or it could be $40. Suchscenarios were not particularly useful forlong-term planning and decision-making, as they provided only a set of plausiblealternatives, with no reasons, justifications orassumptions, thereby offering no basis onwhich managers could exercise judgment.Such scenarios resembled the straight-lineforecasting that Shell and other companieshad engaged in for years and wereincreasingly rejected as inadequate for thecomplexities of the modern world.

The Shell planning team, inspired in partby wider societal initiatives such as the Clubof Rome, started to work with the idea thatthere were a range of driving forces whichimpacted upon their work, which includedbut went beyond industry dynamics to

Strategic Futures Planning Chapter 1

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include social, technological, economic,environmental and political factors (seeFigure 1).

The Shell planners started to focus thedevelopment of scenarios around betterunderstanding these broad drivers, andcreatively weaving future ‘stories’ built on thisnew understanding. The early 1970s saw aperiod of recession in the oil industry becauseof low prices resulting from an oil surplusafter the development of huge fields in theMiddle East. This led Shell planners, alreadyobsessing about the key factors which mightshape their future, to look at the world fromthe perspectives of Middle Eastern oilproducing nations, and think throughdifferent scenarios of how the decisions of thisgroup of nations might shape the world.

These scenarios were presented to seniormanagement in 1972, and led the leadersof Shell to realise that business-as-usualmentalities were blinding them to theinevitability of the coming changes. As aresult, during the 1970s, Shell was betterpositioned to handle the oil embargo and

the dramatic rise in oil prices than many ofits competitors. It catapulted from being theseventh to the second biggest oil companyin the world3.

The rise of futures in public sectororganisations and governmentThe success of Shell and the impact of the1960s initiatives have led to futuresplanning and scenarios being adopted inmany different kinds of organisations andsettings, including the public and not-for-profit sector. But it is important to note thatthe use of futures approaches by publicorganisations is somewhat different to its use in corporations. As a recent House ofCommons review has put it:

“In the private sector, strategy is defined (bythe consultants McKinsey & Company) as ‘acoherent and evolving portfolio of initiativesto drive shareholder value and long-termperformance’. In the public sector, however,strategy is concerned with long-term publicvalue, a complex and contested concept.Accountability is to Parliament and thepublic rather than to shareholders.”

Despite this, there is undoubted potential forapplication of futures approaches in therealm of society and politics. This waspowerfully demonstrated to the world inearly 1990s South Africa. As the GlobalBusiness Network has described it:

“In South Africa in 1991, a diverse group ofSouth African leaders – community activists,politicians, unionists, academics,economists, and business leaders – usedscenario thinking as a way to envision pathsto democracy as the country transitioned outof apartheid. Each resulting scenariodescribed a very different outcome of thepolitical negotiations that were then

Contextual environment

ConstituenciesCustomersCommunitiesPartnersRegulation

Workingenvironment

Driving forces

Driving forces

Your organisation

or issue

SocialTechnological

EconomicEnvironmental

Political

Figure 1: Drivers of the future

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underway. One scenario, which the groupcalled Ostrich, told of what would happen ifthe negotiations were to break downbetween the apartheid government andNelson Mandela’s African NationalCongress [burying head in the sand].Another scenario, Lame Duck, foresaw aworld in which a prolonged transition left the government weak and unable tosatisfy all interests. A third scenario, Icarus,described a South Africa in which the ANCcame to power and its massive publicspending resulted in an economic crash.The fourth scenario, Flight of the Flamingos,described how the apartheid government,the ANC, and their respective constituenciesmight slowly and steadily rise together4.”

These scenarios, known as the Mont Fleurscenarios, were subsequently shared widely

throughout South Africa, and became aninstrumental common language that helpedfacilitate public debate in the transition todemocracy. FW de Klerk was famously quotedin the press as saying “I am not an Ostrich!”

There is now a huge amount of workbeing undertaken by public organisations onfutures issues. Many public sector futuresinitiatives are regional and sector specificsuch as the state-specific health futuresproject in Australia illustrated in Figure 2.

Other public sector futures initiativeshave taken a global perspective on aparticular issue. Perhaps the most famous recent example is the Stern Review of Climate Change, which has re-shaped the way in which policy makers and the public think aboutthe economics of climate change and its impact on the world.

Roundtable

FUTURES PLANNING PROJECT

Futures Forum

Consultation Document and Consultation process

STATE HEALTH PLAN

� Identify key issues and trends which will have greatest impact on health and health care over the next 20 years� Identify uncertainties in relation to trends� Suggest draft operating principals to guide future action

� Clarify values relating to health and health care � For key issues and trends, identify those matters requiring priority attention and action over the next 20 years� Test and refine operating principals which will guide necessary action on key issues over the long-term

Undertake state-wide consultation process to finalise the Future Directions for the NSW public health system. The Future Directions will identify priority areas for action and guide decision-making over the long-term.

Use the Future Directions as a framework to develop a highlevel corporate strategic plan for the NSW public health systemoutlining strategic directions and service development priorities for the next 5 years (2006-210).

28 April 2005

18 July 2005

May-July 2006

October 2006

In Australia, the New South Wales Health Futures Planning Project in is the government's response to recommen-dations for a longer term planning framework for health and health care in NSW. Clarity about the future direc-tions for the New South Wales health care system will help ensure that the system continues to meet patient andcommunity needs over the next 15 to 20 years. While planning for this timeframe in a rapidly changing worldpresents a challenge, it also provides a unique opportunity for the community and health care personnel to workwith government to shape the future of the health system.

Figure 2. State-specific health futures project in Australia


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Finally, there are a number of wide-ranging, multi-sectoral futures initiatives,which involve actively engaging the whole ofgovernment in futures thinking. In Finland, forexample, the government produces a reporton a futures topic once every electoral cycle,which is considered a dedicated Parliament’sCommittee of the Future. The government’smost recent report for the 2003–2007electoral period was on the theme A GoodSociety for People of All Ages and looked atdemographic trends, population policy andpreparation for changes in the age structure.A similar initiative was undertaken by theScottish Parliament, and the recent House ofCommons review of the role of futures in theUK government has recommended that theUK parliament set up a Parliamentary Forumfor the Future5.

Why is futures planning important?The very notion of planning and strategisingin organisations is based upon the idea thatthe future is unpredictable, with only someaspects that can be foreseen. If the futurewas entirely predictable, then the course ofevents would be completely determined inadvance, and planning would make nodifference. On the other hand, if no aspectsof the future were foreseeable then settingout plans and strategies would be futile oreven counterproductive, as there is no wayof knowing in advance what course ofaction will be most appropriate. As onecommentator, JC Glenn, puts it:

“You cannot know the future, but a range ofpossible futures can be known…Gradations offoreknowledge and probabilities can be made;we can be more certain about the sunrise thanabout the rise of the stock market6.”

The insight from JC Glenn above is echoedby those who observe that modern

organisational environments are increasinglycharacterised by levels of unpredictability,surprise and discontinuities. Against thisbackground, one leading thinker hasdeveloped a four-part rationale for theadoption of futures thinking:

Rationale 1: Decisions have long-tterm consequencesWhat we do now will have many futureconsequences, direct and indirect, foreseen and unforeseen. In one way oranother policy and strategy decisions made today will shape the landscape oftomorrow. A policy put in place to addresssome problem could be ineffectual, leading to a worsening of the problem,could solve the immediate problem but have longer-term side effects bringing up a new set of issues, or could successfullynegotiate the difficulties and ensure a better future for the organisation.

We see examples of this in the casestudies in the latter half of this report. InLimits to Growth – the 30-year update it isargued that humanity is currently in theprocess of ‘overshooting’ the capacity ofearth, and policy decisions made bynational governments in the present daycould on the one hand lead to industrialdecline, food shortages, high death ratesand low quality of life, if current policytrends continue, or on the other hand asustained effort to decrease mankind’secological footprint through loweringpollution and controlling birth rates couldresult in a sustainable society.

In the Mont Fleur scenarios it was arguedthat South Africa’s policy decisions made inthe 1990s had the potential to continuecrises and negotiations, lead to anincapacitated government, produce collapsethrough over-ambitious policies, or lead to asustainable, inclusive democracy and growth.

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Rationale 2: Future alternatives implypresent choicesThese possible long-term impacts need tobe considered in weighing up present-daypolicy decisions. Although decisions arealways constrained in some ways,individuals and groups do have the capacityto explore and choose between the possible options for their decisions. Beingmore aware of the alternative courses thatfuture events may take as a result of a policy decision gives a greaterunderstanding of the nature of those optionsthat must be weighed up, as well aspotentially illuminating new options orpossibilities that could have preferable long-term consequences.

Many things take time to create or set inmotion, so it is wise to be mindful inadvance. The rationale for the health futuresproject mentioned earlier is as follows:

“We cannot expect the nature of healthservices in 2023 to be an image of those in2003 simply adjusted for population growth.There is little doubt that the health services in2023 will be as different from those in 2003as today's services are different from those of1983… Just as there will be increasingdemands on the health system driven bydemographic and societal factors, the way inwhich the system delivers health care is morethan likely to further change… The systemmust be capable now to meet future pressureswhile being sufficiently flexible to meetchanging health structures and protocols.”

Looking at this from another angle it is clearthat you need to know where you wouldprefer to end up in the future, or how youwould prefer the future to pan out, in orderto know how to act in the present. If it is notclear where an organisation aims to be inthe future, then it is difficult for members to

decide how to act in the present in order tobring these goals about.

The UK Climate Impacts Scenarios casestudy in Part II provides an interestingillustration of how present day policy makersmust consider possible future implications ofclimate change. For example, it identifies theneed for present-day housing policy toincorporate an understanding of potentialflood plains to ensure sustainabledevelopments are undertaken. In addition,the UK Cabinet Office Trends initiative in thecase studies section highlights issues such asdemographics, which should be taken intoaccount when present-day decisions aremade on a range of subjects, includingpensions, benefits, taxation and so on.

Rationale 3: Forward thinking is preferableto crisis managementCrises are frequently expensive and wasteful,as it is likely to be more costly to reverse adownward trend after it has begun ratherthan to prevent it in the first place. In manycases the effects of a lack of forward thinkingmay be disastrous. As the Stern Review onclimate change puts it: “The scientificevidence is now overwhelming: climatechange is a serious global threat, and itdemands an urgent global response7.”

The report stated that, if no action istaken today, the overall costs and risks ofclimate change will be equivalent to losingat least 5% of global GDP each year, nowand forever, which could rise to 20% ofGDP or more. In contrast, it suggests thatthe costs of action if taken now could belimited to around one per cent of globalGDP each year. Similarly, the Limits toGrowth case study shows that a massive lossof life and dip in wellbeing may result frompolicies focusing on short term issues andonly reacting to matters once they are crises.

In some environments an organisation


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may never be given a chance to recoverfrom being slow to react to changingcircumstances. It is therefore preferable totake a strategic view, exploring options andalternatives, and anticipating eventualitiesand preparing for contingencies. Forwardthinking allows an organisation tounderstand what can be done today toprepare for an uncertain future, and allowthem to rehearse potential strategies.

The Singapore government’s ScenarioPlanning office explains these benefits:

“It approximates to a strategic fire-drill. Welearn to be forward thinking by ‘living in thefuture’, whilst positioning ourselves to reactto change quickly and nimbly8.”

In the case studies, the Mont Fleur processidentified a range of scenarios whichhighlights the importance of forwardthinking. This was embodied in the ‘Icarus’scenario in which short-term thinking andpolicy making could have led to economicand social collapse for the new regime inSouth Africa.

Rationale 4: Further transformations arecertain to occurChange is incessant, and inevitable. Varioustechnological advances have resulted inpeople and societies being increasinglyinterdependent; as Nobel Peace Prize-winnerJoseph Rotblat puts it:

“The fantastic progress in communicationand transportation has transformed theworld into an intimately interconnectedcommunity, in which all members dependon one another for their wellbeing9.”

This combination of factors leavesorganisations and individuals facingaccelerating change. As one thinker

suggests, the possible changes over the nextcentury are probably as great as thosewhich have occurred over the previousmillennium. Such turbulence and dynamicchange dramatically increases the value offutures thinking. As Glenn puts it:

“The increasing complexity and accelerationof change decreases the lead-time fordecisions and makes previous expectationsless reliable. Forecasting increases lead-timebetween potential events and currentplanning. Hence, the faster pace andcomplexity of change today increases thevalue of futures thinking, because itincreases time and space for analysis tocreate more intelligent decisions.”

There are a number of benefits of strategicfutures work that serve to improve anorganisation’s likelihood of better dealingwith the future. Without strategic futureswork, forward planning thinking within anorganisation may go on in an ad-hocmanner, at a superficial level, or bediscouraged or subsumed by organisationalpractices. ‘Group-think’ and similarprocesses can lead to organisations thatnever question their underlying assumptionsabout the future. In addition, conventionalshort-term planning processes can oftenreinforce existing thinking, as organisationsseek out justifications based on existingknowledge, behaviours and trends ratherthan using wider frames of reference. Thesecan cause an organisation to be inflexibleand unreceptive to changing circumstances,which will lead to it being highly vulnerablein times of turbulence.

Futures approaches can help addressthese problems. Through ensuring that anorganisation thinks more explicitly, deeplyand systematically about the future it ispossible to question the received wisdom,

8


unpicking the assumptions that lie beneathcurrent dominant views and encouragingreceptivity to new thinking. It allowsorganisations to better understand what theyknow and don’t know but need to know,better identify upcoming opportunities andthreats, and focus on the difficult questionsthat must be addressed in order to makemore intelligent decisions and design betterpolicy and strategy.

The more that organisations gain insightinto the possible future ramifications ofpresent-day decisions, the greater part theycan play in determining the course of theirfuture. The following chapters explain moreabout how to determine the scope of futuresprojects, provide an overview of futuresmethods, and demonstrates good and badpractices to watch out for.

References1. Bell, Foundations for Futures Studies.2. The Art of the Long View, By Peter Schwartz,

1991, and Strategic Planning in Shell PierreWack, Shell International Petroleum CompanyLimited, Group Planning, 1986.

3. A fuller account is at:http://www.davisfloyd.com/userfiles/Storying%20Corporate%20Futures.pdf

4. Sourced from: http://www.gbn.com5. Governing the Future, House of Commons

Public Administration Select Committee, 2007accessible via: http://www.publications.parlia-ment.uk/pa/cm200607/cmselect/cmpubadm/123/123i.pdf

6. JC Glenn, Futures Research Methodology v2.0.7. HM Treasury, The Stern Review of the Economics

of Climate Change, October 2006, pvi.8. Henley Centre – Understanding Best Practice in

Strategic Futures Work.9. J.Rotblat, in Urry (2003).

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Breadth and complexityIn order to carry out futures work effectivelywithin public sector organisations, or indeedany organisations, it is vital to consider andclarify the intended scope of the project.Futures analysis can be very broad, drawingon work from a wide range of drivers, andapplying a number of different frameworksand perspectives. On the other hand, it canalso be more specific, focusing on how anarrow set of issues might play out, or onspecific factors that are particularly relevantfor a particular organisation or decision.

What is feasible and what is needed isdependent on the context and the resourcesavailable. Importantly, the broader theanalyses, the more important it is to bring ina number of different organisations orexperts to contribute, and consequently thegreater resources required.

One of the best examples of wideranging futures work is that undertaken by theClub of Rome think tank, which aims toaddress ‘the complex set of the most crucialproblems – political, social, economic,technological, environmental, psychologicaland cultural – facing humanity1.’ Manygovernment initiatives also undertake wide-ranging analysis, such as the Norwegiangovernment’s Norway 2030 project, which isintended to inform the work of allgovernment departments, and which involvesparticipation of 15 separate departments.

It is also important to consider thedegree of complexity of the futures analysiswhich will be undertaken. At one end of thespectrum, futures work can take a fairlylinear approach, examining drivers andtrends (for example, healthcare, transport,crime, environment) in isolation. At the other

end, futures projects take into account anumber of drivers simultaneously, exploringhow they might affect each other andpatterns of interaction that shape the future.

The levels of resources available play animportant role in determining the scope ofthe project. The linear approach wouldallow experts in various fields to beconsulted on an individual basis. Bycontrast, a more complex approach couldrequire considerable in-depth analysis afterthe collection of a range of views, bringingtogether experts from different fields in orderto take a more integrated and multi-disciplinary approach to a problem.

There is good reason to believe that inmany areas a more complex view would bemore likely to bring valuable and usefulinsights2. A benchmarking of futuresorganisations undertaken by the UK’sHenley Centre found that ‘almost all’appear to take a multidimensional, complexapproach, even where the topic of concernis quite a specific one3. For example, theInternational Institute for Strategic Studies, amilitary think-tank, brought together businesspeople, journalists, academics andgovernment officials in examining the issueof ‘Scarcity and Conflict’. The projectattempted to identify relationships between arange of key social, economic and politicaldrivers, rather than extrapolating frommilitary trends.

The Henley Centre4 best practice reportproposes that futures work should involve aniterative ‘journey’ through the steps shown inFigure 1. This shows that the most effectivefutures efforts incorporate both specific andmore general and wide-rangingapproaches, and should also move

Chapter 2: Scope and stages of organisational future projects

10


between simple and more complex views of the future.

I. Agree question In the bottom left-handcorner, the organisation decides that itneeds a wider view of the world – eitherto improve its overall perspective or toachieve a better resolution for aparticular problem or issue – and agreesa key question. II. Making the organisation ‘future-ready’ The organisation makes itselfready for a futures approach, winningacceptance from senior managers andpeople at multiple levels within theorganisation that a more strategicapproach is required to the future. III. Futures group builds bigger picture Afutures group applies itself to the work,engaging the organisation as it goes. IV. Futures work feeds into specificthinking, tested with audiences Futuresthinking is then applied to the specificissues faced by the organisation to builda new strategic view. This process can beslow, and it can depend on the successof the methods to make the organisationfuture-ready in Stage II. V. Apply thinking to specific organisationpractice and policymaking In this stage,

the organisation deploys anumber of techniques toensure that the strategicfutures thinking is applied to the organisation’s practice.Effective futures processes should continue through thisloop on an ongoing basis5.

This journey can be seen inthe European Commission’sEurope 2010 Scenarioscase study. After the questionwas agreed, the drivers were

identified (Stage II), their inter-relations wereanalysed (Stage III) and five specific scenariosfor the European Commission were formed(Stage IV), which were used to shape decision-making (Stage V).

Different modes of thinkingStrategic futures methods can be alsocharacterised as spanning a spectrum fromthe highly analytical to the highly creative.For example, trend analysis and simulationare in many ways more ‘hard’ analyticaltools while visioning and horizon-scanningcan involve more creative approaches.

Another way of understanding the ends ofthis spectrum is seeing it as characterised bythe differences between qualitative andquantitative approaches, with some projectsusing statistical and econometric models asthe best way to forecast the future, while otherprojects build on the awareness and insightsof unexpected drivers and possible events.

Two different types of reasoning ofreasoning may be involved. Convergentthinking is about problem solving, bringing a variety of material to bear in order to find a ‘correct’ answer, using description,observation, and deduction. Divergentthinking is related to the creative elaboration of ideas prompted by an

Complex

III. Futures groupbuilds bigger

picture

II. Making theorganisation

‘future-ready’

V. Apply thinking to specific organisationpractice and policymaking

IV. Futureswork feedsinto specificthinking, tested with audiences

Simple

Wide ranging

Specific

Figure 1. The iterative futures journey


11

initial stimulus. Futures planningmethods can be designed to foster‘blue sky’ thinking, or they can bedesigned to foster rigorous and moreanalytical thinking.

It has been remarked that futurespractitioners can often be splitbetween those who favour oneapproach or the other. The analyticalside tends towards a belief thatknowledge of the future can be tieddown given appropriate levels ofanalysis, while the creative tend tofeel comfortable with the sense ofmultiple possible futures. The diagrambelow looks at balancing analytical andcreative approaches.

JS Iversen7 suggests that good futureswork should involve a mix of theseapproaches. As he puts it:

“Good future study design must balance thedivergent and convergent processes in orderto facilitate a process where the use of twodifferent ways of thinking produces a resultwhich is explanatory and creative androoted in facts, numbers, and explicitlystated rational assumptions.”

Stages and frameworkDue to this need to balance different modesof thinking, and assessing matters withdifferent levels of scope and complexity, it isimportant to use a range of methods infutures work. Iverson argues that it is usefulto think of futures work as consisting of thefollowing four phases:

1. Mapping and delineation of subject matter.

2. Identification of critical issues and trends.

3. Assessments of trends.4. Use.

In this framework, the first phase involvesconvergent thinking while phases two, threeand four involve both convergent anddivergent approaches.

J Voros also emphasises the importanceof a coherent foresight framework to ensure futures work brings together thevarious types of reasoning that arenecessary, and feeds effectively intoorganisational strategy. This involves seeingfour key elements of the process: inputs,foresight work, outputs, and strategy.

Inputs: this is the gathering of informationand scanning for strategic intelligence. It could involve many tools and techniques,such as environmental scanning and theDelphi technique, and could include variousworkshop formats such as brainstorming inorder to open out the thinking about thenear future. These tools are covered in moredetail in Chapter Three.

Foresight work: can be conceived ascomprising three broad steps:

Analysis: the sort of question asked hereis what seems to be happening? Theaim is to make a first attempt at findingpatterns in the variety of data which the

Sense that the future is predictable

Sense of ‘multiple futures’

Analytical Creative

6.

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Inputs step usually generates. Commontools used here are trend analysis andcross-impact analysis.Interpretation: this stage looks to probe beneath the surface, to ask the question what’s really happening?This can be performed using tools such as causal layered analysis andsystems thinking.Prospection: this is an activity of creating forward views, where variousviews of alternative futures are explicitlyexamined or created. The questionbeing asked is what might happen?Useful tools at this stage are scenarios,visioning, and backcasting.

Outputs: the focus here is communicatingthe generated insights, and the stimulationof thinking about options, prior to and

as inputs into more formal strategy work.The essence of this step is captured by the question what might we need to do? The aim is to expand the perception ofstrategic options. There are two types of output – tangible, which would includethe actual range of options produced by the work, and intangible, which would include changes in thinking brought about by the process of foresight. Methods employed here could include workshops, reports,multimedia, etc.

Strategy: this is where the results of foresight are passed to those makingstrategic decisions, in order to help direct implementation. The kind of question answered here is what will we do?and how will we do it?

Delphi

“What seems to be happening?”

Trends analysis, cross-impact analysis

Causal layered analysis“What’s really happening?”

Scenarios, visioning, backcasting“What might happen?”

“What might we need to do?”

“What will we do?”Strategy development and strategic planning;

Individual, workgroup, organisation,society, etc.

“How will we do it?”

Reports, presentations, publications, roadmaps

Inputs

Key questions Useful methodologies

Prospection

Outputs

Strategy

Analysis

Interpretation

Foresig

ht

The four elements of futures projects8


13

References1. Club of Rome, in the Henley Centre

Benchmarking UK Strategic Futures Work (2001).2. The Implications of Complexity Theory for

International Development, H. Jones B.Ramalingam and T. Reba, ODI (2007).

3. The Henley Centre Benchmarking UK StrategicFutures Work (2001).

4. The Henley Centre Understanding Best Practicein Strategic Futures Work (2001).

5. ibid6. The Henley Centre Benchmarking UK Strategic

Futures Work (2001).7. Futures thinking methodologies – options relevant

for ‘schooling for tomorrow’, JS Iverson, DanishTechnolgical Institute.

8. Foresight Framework all from J Voros (2005) AGeneric Foresight Process Framework.

15

The importance of methodsAs outlined earlier, it is important thatfutures work produces useful outcomes thatcan properly inform the strategy and policyof an organisation. But how you get there –the methods chosen – are crucial to thesuccess of the exercise.

It is important to understand the role that different tools can play and the way that available tools might fit in with various objectives. This will help ensure that the futures work being carried out is relevant. By being clear and explicit about which methods are used and why, there is greater likelihoodthat the futures project will gain trust,demonstrate openness, and win enthusiasmof participants.

The following analogy from the UKgovernment’s Office of Science andInnovation gives a simple yet powerfulintroduction to some of the key futures methodologies.

“Let us assume you are standing on thebridge of a ship. You scan the horizon(horizon scanning) and see an iceberg andyour supply ship. You work out the likelyspeeds and directions of the iceberg andsupply ship (trend analysis) and put theinformation into the ship’s computer(modelling) and then plot a course(roadmapping) so that you meet with thesupply ship and not the iceberg. While youare doing this you daydream of eatingsome nice chocolate that you hope is onthe supply ship (visioning).

You realise that the speeds anddirections of the iceberg and supply shipmight change, so you work out a range ofpossible options to make sure you have thegreatest chance of meeting the supply ship(scenarios). Even with all of this planning,you know there is a chance of theunexpected and hitting the iceberg so youget the crew to do an evacuation drill(gaming). While they are doing it, you work

back from the most likelyfuture position of the supplyship to work out the steps youneed to get there(backcasting)1.”

Matching approachesIn order to effectively developa process to explore thefuture, it is important to matchthe tools used to the project’sobjectives, outcomes andinformation needs. We look ateach of these in turn below.

Choosing methodologiesbased on outcomesIt is important to consider theproject outcomes that are

Chapter 3: Choosing futures methodologies

Table 1. Choosing methods based on objectives

Suitable methodsObjectives

Horizon scanningDelphiTrend/driver analysis

Looking for challenges andopportunities

ScenariosVisioning

Assessing social, political andeconomic contexts

RoadmapsBackcasting

Defining ideal actions

ModelsSimulations/gaming

To explore future options

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desired from the futures project. These arethe broader goals to which the futuresproject should contribute. Clarity on thehoped-for outcomes will also help highlightthe stakeholders who are most relevant to the project.

Typical outcomes might be normative or exploratory:

Normative: improved institutions’strategic preparedness for key externaltrends and shocks, by informing present-day decision-making.Exploratory: broaden the organisationalhorizons through improved ‘blue sky’ thinking.

For example, the Limits to Growth casestudy reflects a more normative outcome in that it looks to recommend actions tobring about preferred futures, while theCabinet Office Trends case studydemonstrates a more exploratory and open-ended outcome.

Choosing methodolo-gies based on objectivesThe project objectives areusually described in terms ofthe key questions the projectis seeking to inform. It isvital to make sure that everystream of work in the projectreflects these questions,because this will make itmuch easier to ensure thatall relevant aspects arecovered, and make it easierto draw together the variouselements into one coherentoutput. Typical objectivesmight be to:

look for challenges and opportunities;assess social, political and economic contexts;define ideal actions;explore future options.

Table 1 shows a useful framework which matches specific methods to different kinds of objectives, and how tocombine approaches.

Choosing methodologies based oninformation needs It is important to consider what sort ofinformation is likely to be of most use for theproject’s stakeholders, and/or what type ofanalysis and evidence they are likely to findmost credible. For example, the Americanorganisation Resources for the Future basesits futures work on economic models andhighly quantitative approaches, driven by the principle that these kinds of informationwill carry more weight within the USexecutive bodies2.

Table 2. The information base of different methods

Method Quantitative Qualitative

Casual layeredanalysis

X

Cross-impact analysis X

Modelling X

Delphi techniques X

Econometrics andstatistical modelling

X

Horizon scanning X

Futures wheel X

Visioning X

Road mapping X

Scenarios X

Simulation, gaming X

Trend analysis X


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Typical informationconsiderations might include:

Quantitative and qualitativeinformation – what balanceto strike?Different kinds of analysis –how to use and combine tobest effect?What kind of timeline isbeing explored, for example, five to ten years,30 years+, etc?

Based around the quantitativeand qualitative distinction, the categorisationin Table 2 (opposite) can be used.

For example, the Mont Fleur Scenarioscase study highlights a number ofqualitative, narrative-based scenarios, theaim of which was to inform and mobilisemany different stakeholders across SouthAfrican society. By contrast, the ForesightFutures 2020 Scenarios case studydemonstrates a more detailed and in-depthanalysis intended to be used by specialistsand senior executives making decisionsabout strategic issues.

Combining approachesThe OST provide a useful approach forcombining the different futures methodolo-gies, based on a number of dependenciesbetween approaches and a number ofoptional connections. These are demonstrated in Figure 1 above.

References1. Office of Science and Innovation, Strategic

Futures Planning: Suggestions for success: Atoolkit, www.foresight.gov.uk

2. Understanding Best Practice.

Figure 1. Connections and dependencies between methods

ScenariosA scenario is a detailed picture of aplausible future world, which describes thefuture conditions in a way which allows theplanner to comprehend the possibleproblems, challenges and opportunities that it would present. The term wasintroduced by Herman Kahn in connectionwith strategic studies carried out by theRAND Corporation in the 1950s and 60s,and transferred into corporate use in the70s as companies such as Shell usedscenario planning to anticipate possiblefuture events and react quickly to changing circumstances.

There are a number of different methods for constructing scenarios. Schwarts offers several steps required in their development1:

1. The setting: what are the centralconcerns, the key issues, of the users ofthe scenarios?

2. Identify the drivers: identify the drivingforces that are likely to have the mostimportant influences on these centralconcerns of the future.

3. Analyse the drivers: where can thedrivers be reasonably predicted, what isknown and unknown, the trends and thetrend breaks?

4. Assessment of the importance and theuncertainty of the drivers: identify two orthree critical factors of the centralthemes of the scenarios.

5. Select the scenario logics:construct the main themes orassumptions around which the scenarios are to be built. It is importantto end up with a few scenarios whose differences are relevant fordecision-makers.

6. Develop the scenarios: often done in theform of narratives that represent aplausible sequence of events.

7. Impact analyses: analyse the impact ofthe scenarios on the key concerns withwhich the process began.

8. Policy implications: analyse theimplications for policy and identifyindicators that will help monitor changesas they occur.

Scenarios are used to encompass a broadspan of possible futures, to ensure that planscould cope with many eventualities, and willbe robust under the many different ways inwhich the future could pan out. In this way, ascenario is not intended as a specific forecast,but rather varieties of scenarios outline variouspossibilities for alternative futures, constructinga ‘possibility space’ in which the future is likelyto unfold2. Thus, a good scenario should notonly be plausible, internally consistent, andanchored in clear purposes and assumptions,but also concise and creative, providing realalternatives for the future which can be usefulto decision-makers.

Scenarios can be developed throughlong and intricate processes, or inabbreviated workshops, and anything inbetween. This depends on their intended useand the various resource constraints, forexample, scenarios developed from scratchin a four-hour workshop can be usedprimarily to give a group experience of theprocess rather than providing concreteinputs into policy.

The types of question being answeredthrough the scenario process can becategorised in the following way3:

Predictive scenarios: aim to answer thequestion what will happen? in two

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Chapter 4: Specific methods

20


possible ways – forecasts respond to thequestion what will happen, on thecondition that the likely developmentunfolds? while what-if scenarios respondto the question what will happen, on thecondition of some specified events?Explorative scenarios: respond to thequestion what can happen? in two ways– external scenarios examines thedevelopment of external factors, andstrategic scenarios look at what canhappen if the organisation acts in acertain way.Normative scenarios: look at how a specific target can be reached, withtwo angles – preserving scenariosexamine how the target can be reachedthrough adjustments to the currentsituation, and transforming scenarioslook at how an answer can be reachedwhen the prevailing structure blocks thenecessary changes.

The benefit of scenario planning is to give abalanced evaluation of the range ofstrategies that may be required by anorganisation, offering signposts andindicating possible paths to alternativefutures. However, difficulties may arise inconvincing decision-makers to incorporatethe results into their ways of thinking. Also,because they are based on qualitativeanalysis they are not necessarily particularlyprecise instruments, and are dependent onthe level of creativity, imagination andrigorous thinking that go into them.

For examples of the use of scenarios,see the case studies in Part II.

Environmental scanning/horizon scanningEnvironmental scanning was a term coinedin the 1960s by Harvard Business Schoolprofessor Francis Aguilar to describe the

action of ‘watching and collectinginformation on a company’s rivals and theoverall market4’. Brown and Weiner explainthat it should be seen as a ‘kind of radar toscan the world systematically and signal thenew, the unexpected, the major and theminor5’. It is a process that aims to provideearly warning to managers, a system toorganise the information flow about varioustrends and events that may be significant foran organisation.

It can be carried out using a number oftechniques. One approach is the use ofexpert panels, which provide observationsand judgements about importantdevelopments that are underway orexpected. As with Delphi, the value of this‘look out’ panel will depend on theknowledge and cooperation of thepanellists, so it is essential to give muchconsideration to choosing participants whohave the required level of expertise and arelikely to contribute valuable ideas. A secondapproach, suggested by Glenn, is to use acomputerised online literature review. Thisinvolves searching through online databasesusing carefully selected search terms inorder to uncover information that mayprovide clues to important future trends.Thirdly, a hard-copy literature review can becarried out, and a fourth approach is tocommission a number of essays onemerging issues by experts.

P. Terry6 argues that there are three areasof focus for environmental scanning:

1. the first is the immediate environment ofcurrent concern to the organisation;

2. the second is the probable environmentnot of immediate concern to theorganisation but likely to be in the future;

3. the third is the possible environment,‘weaker signals’ that may become veryserious issues or disappear.


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This can have two aspects: the societal or‘general’ environment, and the task or‘specific’ environment. Clearly the boundarybetween these two is not clear-cut or static.

There are a number of ways thatorganisations can integrate environmentalscanning. Passive scanning is ongoing,which will usually involve ad hoc activity,and employees simply ‘bearing in mind’ the need to keep an eye on theenvironment, almost at a subconsciouslevel. Active scanning involves a muchhigher level of attention, and involvesexplicit and systematic activities.

In addition to this, Terry argues thatorganisations can perform such scanning in irregular, regular and continuous modes.Irregular involves a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ toan unanticipated occurrence; regularinvolves periodic reflection often onspecified issues, whereas continuousscanning is the ongoing monitoring ofvarious environmental systems rather thanspecific events.

The downside is that environmentalscanning is ‘an imperfect activity7’, and cannot achieve total objectivity. Scanners arefaced with various decisions about what tofocus on, what material to include, and aretypically influenced by their overall world viewthat will favour some factors over others.

The ten challenges to local government, in the Local GovernmentFutures case study in Part II, are a usefulexample of an environmental/horizonscanning approach.

Trend and driver analysisThe terms trend analysis, quantitative trendanalysis, driver analysis, qualitative trendanalysis, and trend impact analysis mark outa set of techniques which are used forspotting emerging patterns in historical dataand examining where they may lead.

Quantitative trend analysis involvesanalysing historical data using statisticalmodels or other such analytical tools inorder to fit a curve to the data which can beextrapolated into the future. Tools suitablefor this task include time series forecasts,trend extrapolations, S-curve analyses, cycleanalyses and long-waves analyses.

Since these approaches are based ondata, they are best suited to fields where thereare large and reliable data collections. Theirbenefits lie in the high degree of objectivity inthe method, the ease of communicating theiruse and their being relatively inexpensive toperform. On the downside (except in highlystable systems) it is often quite unlikely that thefuture will turn out to run as such a simpleextrapolation of the past, so they serve best asa useful starting point for futures discussions.This aspect can be missed, and the data isoften taken as an unquestionable predictionof the future.

Trend Impact Analysis (TIA) is a methodthat improves on quantitative trend analyses.TIA uses extrapolations of historical trendscombined with and modified by expectationsabout possible future events. An analystinterested in tracking a particular trend cansystematically examine the effects of possiblefuture events, including technological,political, social and economic changes.

TIA involves two main steps8:

1. a curve is fitted to historical data tocalculate the future trend, given nounprecedented future events; and

2. expert judgements are used to identify aset of future events that, if they were tooccur, could cause deviations from theextrapolation of historical data. For eachsuch event, experts judge the probabilityof occurrence, possible time that thetrend will take to be affected, andexpected impact.

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Step one provides a forecast for a ‘surprise-free’ future, just as with quantitative trendanalyses, but then judgement andimagination are needed to identify potentialsignificant events and their impact. Theseevents can be identified using a number ofmethods, such as literature reviews or aDelphi study.

TIA offers clear advantages overstraightforward trend analysis, adding moredepth and realism to forecasts. Criticismslevelled at the technique focus on the factthat the list of possible events and theirpotential impact is inevitably incomplete,and can be affected by certain assumptionsabout the future.

Qualitative trend analysis can be seenas more of a matter of interpretation and an‘art form’ compared to the relativelytechnical exercises of quantitative trendanalyses9. They involve spotting traces andclues about the future, and looking at howthese trends and their consequences mayaffect the system being investigated.

Qualitative trend analysis can be used inall areas, but are often most useful to use insituations of considerable change, wherequantitative analysis may be inappropriate.Coates10 identifies fours steps for performingqualitative trend analysis:

1. develop a conceptual framework of theforces at play;

2. look for theoretical constructs that shedlight on these forces, and identify what isknown and unknown about them;

3. seek out any relevant information; and,4. derive an alternative future implied by

the examination of that system.

Qualitative trend analyses can give insightsinto possible future scenarios that may notbe possible to get from other techniques,and may bring a greater understanding of

the whole system involved. However, theyare unavoidably limited by the personalviews and assumptions of those peoplecarrying them out, and it can often bedifficult to identify how many different trendsmay pan out – whether something is a short-term fad or a major long-term shift.

For a concrete example of trendanalysis, see the Cabinet Office Key Trendscase study in Part II.

VisioningThe creation of a vision of the future that anorganisation would like to see is an essentialelement of normative forecasting. It involvesasking the question how would we like thefuture to evolve? in a systematic,comprehensive manner in order to helpanswer the wider question of what shouldwe do now? Contemporary normativeforecasting had its origins in World War IIwith the military need for goal and mission-oriented planning, and has since been usedin many large public and privateorganisations. The conclusions andsuggested guidelines in the Limits to Growthcase study in Part II are a powerful exampleof visioning.

The creation of a vision is importantbecause it provides a focus, purpose anddirection for the planning process. Thisprovides a normative base against whichother goals, objectives, strategies and projectscan be judged – it is impossible to know how to act today if we do not know where we want to be tomorrow. The vision expressesthe goals that the organisation is strivingtowards, which can help with the planning ofvarious activities by providing a ‘big picture’that they should fit into. This also has theeffect of bringing the members of theorganisation together through underlining thepart they are each playing in bringing aboutthese overall aims.


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Visioning is best undertaken wheninformed with a variety of exploratoryforecasts, and analysis of the ways the futuremight pan out. As such, it is best used as partof a wider foresight process. There are manypossible techniques for producing a vision, butthe most common are various surveytechniques: visions can be formulated throughconducting in-depth interviews with peopleboth inside and outside the organisation,through holding meetings and workshops withthem, or through the Delphi technique.

The vision statement produced can feedinto the strategic planning process. It isworth noting that visions can often be easilyconfused with mission statements andstrategic plans. They are interrelated, but thefollowing questions may serve to helpdistinguish them: mission statement – whydo we exist now?; vision statement – whereshould we be headed?; strategic plan –how do we plan to get there?11.

It is acknowledged that normativeforecasting is ‘indispensable’ to planning inlarge organisations12. However, there issignificant danger in performing thevisioning activity badly. Whereas a wellformed vision statement can have the powerto motivate and align efforts, visions formedthrough processes not carrying out thenecessary analysis, or taking too narrow aview, can produce nothing but ‘a piece ofpaper that everyone subsequently ignores’13.

BackcastingBackcasting is the process of planning froma desirable future outcome. It has its originin the 1970s, when Amory Lovins proposedit as an alternative technique for electricitysupply and demand14. The actual term wascoined by Robinson, who defined it as15:

“The major distinguishing characteristic ofbackcasting analysis is a concern, not with

what futures are likely to happen, but withhow desirable futures can be attained. It isthus explicitly normative, involving workingbackwards from a particular desirable futureend-point to the present in order todetermine the physical feasibility of thatfuture and what policy measures would berequired to reach that point.”

The activity follows the formulation of animage or several images of a desirablefuture (such as a vision or normativescenarios). The task of backcasting is then toassess how this future can be achieved,asking questions such as what are theresources to help one get there? what is thestate of society that would allow one tomove in that direction?, and then whatplans and policies can we put in place towork towards this? Futurologists tend todefine backcasting as an approach ratherthan a method, it can be carried outthrough a variety of techniques such asexpert panels, Delphi techniques, andparticipatory processes.

Dreborg16 argues that the followingcharacteristics favour backcasting:

when the problem to be studied iscomplex, affecting many sectors andlevels of society;when there is a need for major change, such as when marginal changes within the prevailing order will not be sufficient;when the dominant trends are part ofthe problem – these trends are often thecornerstone of forecast;when the problem to a great extent is amatter of externalities, which the marketcannot treat satisfactorily; andwhen the time horizon is long enough to allow considerable scope fordeliberate choice.

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Clearly the usefulness of backcastingdepends greatly on the quality of the futurevisions or scenarios which are worked backfrom, as well as the judgements about thesteps required to reach that future state.Therefore, it is important to incorporatediverse perspectives, and knowledgeableparticipants. Backcasting is used in theLimits to Growth case study as an overallway of structuring the analysis and thinking.

Simulation/gamingThe use of simulations and games allows youto investigate the dynamics of a system bylooking at how different scenarios might playout, and how people or organisations mightreact to new situations. This approach hasbeen used throughout the ages, for examplewith the use of war games to train soldiers,models simulations used by designers andarchitects to test their ideas, and fire drills toimprove an organisation’s response to suchan emergency. More recently, computermodels have hugely expanded the potentialfor simulation and gaming.

Simulations and games use a model of asituation to investigate them. A model is asimplified representation of somephenomenon: examples include a scalemodel of a building using small physicalobjects to investigate architecturalcharacteristics, a mathematical model used torepresent the forces affecting an atom withvarious equations, or a computer model usingmathematical relationships to generate apicture of the forces at work in an economy. Asimulation is the use of this model to exploreand predict the possible behaviour of the real-life phenomenon that is being modelled. Itallows one to pose various what if…?questions so, for example, a computer modelof the economy could simulate the effect of aproposed new taxation in order to understandthe possible effects of such a policy. A game,

although notoriously difficult to define, tendsto place a player (a person, an organisation,a team, or even a device) in a structure ofobjectives or competition with other players,standards, and so on. So, for instance, awould-be pilot might be asked to performaerobatic tasks in a flight simulator, a disastermanagement team might have to coordinatea response to a fictional event, or childrenmight be taught about disaster risk reductionthrough the use of a simple computer gamewhere the objective is to fortify a villageagainst impending natural hazards17.

Rausch18 suggests some common tasks required in the design of games and simulations:

setting objectives, defining scope, andsetting resource demands;selecting design features of the model toexpress and communicate the fixed andvariable conditions and theirrelationships, including the assumptionson which they are based;adapting the design to the characteristics and arrangement ofparticipants and coordinators;selecting a communications system toprepare participants and coordinator forthe simulation/game and to provideinstructions/guidelines;considering ease of access duringsimulation and game activities to designers for clarification of questions not answered in theinstructions or guidelines;selecting facilities and equipment fordelivery of the model and for workingthe simulation and/or the game; andconstructing, reviewing, and piloting simulations.

The great strength of simulation and games is the opportunity they offer to


25

allow experimentation with various possiblefuture options without the worry of the costs that might be incurred by carrying outsuch experimentation in real life. They canalso offer multidimensional views of asituation that is extremely hard to capture incomplex systems19, allowing a broaderpicture and more detailed examination thanotherwise available.

However, clearly any simulation or gamecan only be useful to the extent that themodel it is based on represents the situationor phenomenon being investigated. This canbe a difficult task, and at every stage apotential forecast or beneficial strategy mustbe analysed for its realism, and whether it ismore a feature of the model than the realitybeing modelled.

The Scotland Futures Forum case studyprovides an interesting example of gamingin the Young Time Lords Face the Future,where 100 young people participated indynamic processes exploring theirperceptions of the future.

Delphi techniqueThis technique is named after the Oracle atDelphi, famous in classical times forforeseeing the future. It is a set ofprocedures for eliciting and refining theopinions of a group, usually a panel ofexperts, in a way designed to minimise theadverse qualities that are usuallyencountered when groups interact.

The basic features are:

structured questioning;iteration;controlled feedback;anonymity of responses.

While there are a range of Delphi techniques,which differ from application to application,there is set of common elements.

First, the topic of discussion is circulatedso that the participants can sharegeneral thoughts and comments on theissues under scrutiny before a setstructure is decided.These responses are synthesised by the monitoring team, and aquestionnaire is then developed anddistributed to participants. Thisquestionnaire is drawn up in order toascertain the opinions of theparticipants, and to start to find points of convergence and disagreement.Thirdly, the questionnaires are re-distributed a number of times, each time presenting the informationfrom previous questionnaires.

The feedback provides each participant withtextual and statistical material on thegroup’s response, as well as their ownresponse. Where a participant’s view differsradically from the group’s, they are asked toreconsider and/or justify it. This process isrepeated until a certain level of stability orconsensus is reached.

Common variations include missing outthe first stage, with the monitoring teamframing questions based on their ownresearch. Also, there are often one-to-oneinterviews or group meetings held inbetween rounds of questionnaires.

Its champions see Delphi methods asoffering a way of objectively exploring issuesthat require judgement and decisions. Theysee the collective judgements and the resultsof a consensus between experts as morereliable and objective than other methods.The process also highlights the reasons fordisagreement in a constructive manner.

Delphi techniques are best used toanswer four broad kinds of questions20:

1. normative issues such as ‘goal setting’;

26


2. narrative issues such as ‘problem statements’;

3. predictive issues such as forecasting theoccurrence of new events, and valuesand trends of key parameters; and

4. suggestive issues such as developingcausal models and formulating new policies.

The key to a successful Delphi study lies inthe selection of participants, and the groupcould include both mainstream experts aswell as ‘unknown’ people who may beoutside the normal lines of communicationbut may be able to contribute innovative ideas.

Criticisms levelled at Delphi techniquesquestion the basis for taking its results asany more objective than other methods, thatthe pressure to conform with the statisticalfeedback from the panel is an instance ofexactly the sort of ‘adverse quality ofinteracting groups’ that Delphi claims toeliminate, and that the process can take too long.

There are a number of othertechniques for ascertaining the opinions ofexperts, which may be less formalised thanDelphi. One example of this is theexploratory process initiated in the UKClimate Impact Scenarios, where the futurewas approached in an exploratory way bytaking into account the knowledge andperceptions of the social and economicplayers involved.

Cross-impact analysisAn event that occurs often has causalpredecessors that made it more likely, and itin turn will have an effect on future events.This interrelationship between events anddevelopments is known as cross-impact. Thecross-impact method was first developed byTheodore Gordon and Olaf Helmer in

1966 as a way of forecasting future eventsbased on how they might interact. It wasinitially developed as a fairly basic gamewhere events occurred according to certainprobabilities, and each new occurrenceaffected the probability of a number of otherevents occurring.

It became clear that the interactionsbetween events constituted a powerful wayto examine perceptions about the future(Gordon 1994)21, and this possibility wastaken forward in a number of simulations(for example by John Stover in simulatingthe economy of Uruguay)22. In recent years ithas been used as a standalone method aswell as integrated with other tools, forexample it can be integrated with moredeterministic methods to include perceptions about possible interactions, andmailed questionnaires and Delphi studieshave been used to collect judgements about probabilities.

The first step in conducting a cross-impact analysis is to define the events to beincluded in the study, in order to ensure thatall pertinent possibilities are consideredwhile not over-complicating analysis (thenumber of interactions to consider increasesrapidly with the number of events).

The next step is to assign the initialprobability that each event will occur bysome future year, judged in isolation. Afterthis, the conditional probabilities arecalculated, which is the way in which theoccurrence of each event will affect theprobability of occurrence of the others.These are put into a cross-impact matrix,and a computer programme is used toperform a calibration of the matrix, whichproduces new estimates of the eventsprobabilities that take into account theinterrelationships between the events. Thedifferences between the initial and finalprobabilities are a result of reducing


27

inconsistencies in judgements, not takinginto account certain possible combinationsof events. After this, sensitivity analysis canbe performed to analyse which judgementsand events have a particularly large part toplay in the overall determination ofprobabilities, and policy testing can beperformed through introducing an additional event (and its cross-impact) to thematrix, and comparing the resultingcalibrated matrix with that of the originalcalibrated one.

The selection of events is performedthrough a literature search, consulting keyexperts, or other such methods, and can berefined through combining closely-relatedevents, eliminating others, and refiningwording for others. Similarly, the initialestimation of probabilities needs to becarried out through consultation withexperts. They can either estimate theprobability of events ‘judged in isolation’, or include possible interactions; either way,the matrix calibration improves theseestimations in light of the interactionsbetween the events.

Criticisms of the cross-impact methodallude to the fact that the collection of datacan be fatiguing and tedious – an eight byeight matrix requires 56 conditionalprobability judgements to be made, and a20 by 20 matrix requires 380 judgements.Also, it has not been proven that theconditional probabilities are necessarilymore accurate than the estimates of a priori probabilities.

However, the act of examining therelationships and interactions of futureevents is a worthwhile one, and looking athow coherent judgements of probability arein relation to these interactions can addpower to futures approaches. Theinterdependence of drivers and trends whichis the primary concern of cross-impact

analysis is at the heart of the Limits toGrowth case study, and this approach alsofeatures to a certain degree in the Europe2010 Scenarios case study.

Roadmaps Roadmaps are visualisations of the futureintegrating all relevant organisationalaspects. Key to a good roadmap is the skillof showing the important, relevant issues.Roadmaps are often documented andpresented at several layers of detail. Thehigher levels are important to create andmaintain the overview, while the moredetailed levels explain the supporting data,providing an immediate insight in to themost relevant developments.

Roadmaps and the roadmappingprocess serve as excellent communicationtools – an effective means to link strategicoperations, collaborative ventures, andbusiness plans. However, to achieve success,roadmaps need to involve the appropriategroup intelligence, and provide a specificlevel of detail.

Wild cards Wild cards refer to incidents with perceivedlow probability of occurrence but withpotentially high impacts and strategic conse-quences for an organisation or a society if itwere to take place. Such sudden and uniqueincidents might constitute turning points inthe evolution of a certain trend or systemand are usually serious, destructive, cata-strophic or anomalous and essentially not predictable.

Important questions surrounding theseare which are the most important wild cardsfor an organisation?, can we anticipate theirarrival?, is there anything we can do aboutthem?23. This concept may be introducedinto anticipatory decision-making activity inorder to increase the ability of organisations

28


to adapt to surprises arising in turbulentbusiness environments.

Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) CLA has been developed by SohailInayatullah as a method of deepeningthinking about the future, through looking atdifferent layers of analysis. CLA involvesparticipants exploring four different layers ofunderstanding the issues of concern:

1. ‘litany’ involves visible events, issues and quantitative trends that do not necessarily appear connected or continuous;

2. the ‘systemic’ level is concerned withsocial causes, where interpretation giveseconomic, cultural, political andhistorical perspectives on various data;

3. the ‘discourse’ or ‘worldview’ level goesdeeper, looking at structures andassumptions that constitute or ‘frame’ aproblem; and

4. the ‘metaphor’ or ‘myth’ level, whichinvolves deep stories, unconsciousdimensions of the problem, providingthe emotional experience behind the worldview.

Morphological analysis This is a method for rigorously structuringand investigating the total set ofrelationships in complex socio-technicalproblems. The method is carried out bydeveloping a parameter space of theproblem to be investigated, and definingrelationships between the parameters on thebasis of looking to eliminate inconsistent orimpractical combinations of variousparameters. Fritz Zwicky applied it to suchdiverse fields as the classification ofastrophysical objects and developing newforms of propulsive power systems24, withfive basic steps:

1. formulation and definition of a problem;2. identification and characterisation of all

parameters toward a solution;3. construction of a multidimensional

matrix (morphological box) whosecombinations will contain all possible solutions;

4. evaluation of the outcome based onfeasibility and achievement of desiredgoals; and

5. in-depth analysis of best possibilitiesconsidering available resources25.

References1. Schwarts, quoted from PIU Strategic futures team

A Futurist’s Toolbox 2001.2. PIU Stategic futures team A Futurist’s

Toolbox 2001.3. L. Borjeson, M. Hojer, K. Dreborg, T. Ekvall, G.

Finnvedon, Scenario types and techniques:towards a user’s guide, Futures 38 (2006)pp723-739.

4. Fuld & Company, Inc CI Strategies & Tools:Intelligence Dictionary.

5. Brown, A., & Weiner, E. (1985). Supermanaging: How to harness change for personal and organisational success. New York: Mentor.

6. Terry P (1977) ‘mechanisms for environmentalscanning’ in Long Range Planning Vol 10 No 3 pp2-9.

7. Marien M (1991) ‘scanning: an imperfect activityin an era of fragmentation and uncertainty’ inFutures Research Quarterly, fall.

8. Glenn, Futures Research Methodology.9. Cabinet Office Toolkit.10. (in cabinet office toolkit), originally: Coates, An

overview of futures method, in The KnowledgeBase of Futures Studies, Vol 2, DDM mediagroup, Australia.

11. Visioning at-a-glance, MAPP.12. Normative Forecasting by J Coates, in Futures

Research Methodolgy, Glenn.13. The Future Belongs To Those Who..., Institute for

Alternative Futures.14. A Lovins, in J Quist and P Vergragt, Past

and future of backcasting: The shift to stakeholder participation and a propasal for a methodological framework, Futures 38(2006), 1027-1045.


29

15. Robinson (1990), Futures under glass: a recipefor people who hate to predict, Futures, Vol. 22(9): 820-843.

16. KH Dreborg, Essence of Backcasting, Futures 28(1996) 813-828.

17. http://dev.threeserve.com.un_isdr/18. E Rausch, Simulations and games in futuring and

other issues, Futures Research Methodolgy (1994).19. See Implications of Complexity Theory for

International Development, H Jones, BRamalingham and T Reba, forthcoming.

20. Overview of Four Futures Methodologies, Trudi Lang.

21. Theodore Jay Gordon, Cross-impact method,Futures Research Methodology.

22. The use of Probabilistic System Dynamics in theAnalysis of National Development Policies: AStudy of Economic Growth and IncomeDistribution in Uruguay, presented at the 1975Summer Computer Simulation Conference, SanFrancisco, California, July 1975.

23. J.L Petersen, Out of the Blue: How to anticipateBig Future Surprises, Madison, Lanham, 1999.

24. F Zwicky, Morphological Astronomy, TheObservatory. Vol. 68, No, 845, Aug. 1948, S.121-143.

25. Relevance Tree And Morphological Analysis byThe Futures Group (1994), in Futures Thinking Methodologies.

31

Clarifying objectives, limitations andtimeframes of futures workOne review of best practice for strategicfutures work argues that it is crucial toensure that people understand and trust theprocess being used:

“Transparent processes where methodologiesand objectives are explained fully to theparticipants are more likely to be successfulthan ‘black box’ methodologies where theassumptions are concealed.1”

This general statement applies particularly tostrategic futures, as those who are notfamiliar with it may view attempts to forecastthe future as involving some kind of‘soothsaying’ or ‘hocus pocus’. Therefore, itis particularly important to clarify the natureof futures work both with those who will beinvolved in it and those who will be usingthe outputs. Here are some commonproblems and misunderstandings.

Common problem one: prediction versusforecast versus foresight One of the most common misunderstand-ings about futures is that it a form ofmodern-day soothsaying, which enables its users to predict future events. Another common confusion is that futures is about extending the past into the future.

A prediction is a confident statementabout a future state of affairs. They areubiquitous in everyday life, but tendmainly to be useful when dealing withsystems that can be fully measured and understood.

A forecast is more probabilisticstatement, often based on conditionalhypotheses, and grounded in carefulanalyses of past experience with thesystem in question.Foresight is a natural human facultyused for day-to-day decision-making,involving one’s perception of the natureand significance of events before theyhave occurred. Slaughter argues that:‘foresight is the ability to create andmaintain a high-quality, coherent andfunctional forward view and to use theinsights in organisationally useful ways’.Horton offers an alternative: ‘foresight isa process of developing a range ofviews of possible ways in which thefuture could develop, and understandingthese sufficiently well to be able todecide what decisions can be takentoday to create the best possibletomorrow’. The process of foresight mayinvolve carrying out various exploratoryforecasts and predictions, andsynthesising the results.

Strategic futures planning is oftencharacterised as incorporating a foresightfunction into organisations.

Common problem two: forecasting accuracy versus forecasting precision versus forecasting usefulness It should be noted that these three conceptsdo not necessarily go hand-in-hand:

A forecast could be precise withoutbeing accurate, for example the weather forecast could state tomorrow’sweather to within 0.01 degrees C

Chapter 5: Good practices and common problems

32


but come tomorrow turn out to be inaccurate.Similarly, a forecast could be accuratebut not precise, such as forecasting thattomorrow’s temperature will be between-20 and +50 degrees C.Forecasts can be accurate and useful ina variety of different ways, but can alsobe useful despite being whollyinaccurate. For example, they can beself-defeating such as with what isknown as the Lijphart effect2, where theprediction of a future undesirable stateof affairs causes actors to move toprevent this ‘natural’ result fromepidemic break out may make theepidemic less likely through motivatingpolitical action among key stakeholders.

Forecasts involved in strategic futuresplanning can serve a variety of purposes,including a mix of these three.

These considerations serve to helpanswer a common misunderstanding aboutthe nature of futures work: its value is not inforecasting accuracy, and it should not bejudged on whether its various forecasts wereaccurate or not. It has been noted thatmany: “embark on strategic futures workbecause they want to know what the futurewill hold. However, sometimes they confuseprediction with understanding. Managerswant to reduce the anxiety caused by theuncertainty of not knowing. This immediatelycreates a source of disappointment, for it isnever possible to know the future.” (HenleyCentre 2001.)

Forecasts can be intended to be provenwrong, for example in the original Limits toGrowth study the authors fully hoped thattheir predictions of mankind exceeding thecarrying capacity of the earth would beseized upon as a warning and preventedfrom occurring. The value of strategic

futures work should be judged on its abilityto help decision-makers make policy now byusing methods to look at the range ofpossible futures, identifying and evaluatingpossible policy decisions throughilluminating and anticipating the variousopportunities and threats, and theconsequences of one’s actions.

The limitations of futures workStrategic futures work is not a ‘silver bullet’,and has its limitations. There are a largenumber of features of today’s society that,with hindsight, would be nearly impossibleto predict 30 years ago. Often the mostsignificant events are those which nobodyforesaw, and frequently various newpossibilities stemming from some kind offundamental breakthrough are very difficultto conceive before that breakthrough.

Being systematic and rigorous aboutforward thinking ensures that anorganisation does everything it can to takeresponsibility for the future, by ensuring thatthe organisation is being as prudent aspossible about where it is heading. However,clearly this doesn’t guarantee that the futurewill be free from surprises.

It may make decisions better-informed,but this does not necessarily make decisionseasy. Decision-making in the context ofuncertainty and a variety of possible futuresis complex and tough.

The timeframe of futures workIt is important to understand that strategic futures work will take time to deliverbenefits to an organisation. It takes time tolearn what approach best suits theorganisation, which methodologies best fitthe context and environment, and by itsnature the results of futures thinking workmay not be felt for a number of years afterits completion. This can cause anxiety, as

protagonists look to see concrete resultsfrom their efforts.

A survey of organisations involved instrategic futures work has found that theconsiderable length of time for which manyof them have been involved in futures workis ‘striking’3, as shown below.

Such long-term commitment to futureswork involves institutionalising futures withinthe organisation, and fostering ongoingprojects and mobilising resources. This isnot easy, however, as the more effective anorganisation is with establishing futures asan ongoing process, the more difficult itmay be to recognise the impact of avertedcrises. As Ged Davis of Shell puts it:

“One of the difficulties of assessing thevalue of scenario work is that it’s the dogsthat don’t bark that matter. It’s the eventsthat happen that are a crisis for otherpeople that aren’t a crisis for you. It’s quietpreparation ahead of events that matters4.”

Positioning and involvement in anorganisational contextEnsuring ownershipStrategic futures work cannot achieve itsobjectives without it being accepted not just

by senior management, but throughout theorganisation. A study of best practicesuggests that:

“Much of the effectiveness of strategicfutures thinking depends on the willingnessof the futures group or organisation toengage with the organisation as a wholeand, critically, vice versa. In the world of thelearning organisation, this requires inclusiveand participatory processes which aredesigned to engage members of theorganisation throughout. This is as true ofmodelling-based processes as it is ofscenario methods, since the assumptionsunderpinning the model are critical to theacceptance within the organisation of theoutput, and therefore needed to be testedwith stakeholders5.”

There are a number of ways that this could becarried out. The Henley centre emphasises in-depth stakeholder engagement, in which theproponents of the new ideas stemming fromthe futures work ‘have to engage withopinion-formers, stakeholders, and networksboth inside and outside the organisation towin acceptance for new ideas6’. This involvesensuring that senior managers are exposed to


33

12

0 to 9

No of organisations

Length of experience in strategic futures work (years)

10 to 19 20 to 29 30 to 39 40 to 49 50 to 59 60 to 69 70 to 79 80 to 89

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0

9

4

8

23

10

2

34


the foresight process, including representativesof all key departments in the process, anddistributing information generated throughoutthe organisation as quickly as possible.Another approach suggested by Andy Hines iswhat he calls ‘permission futuring’:

“The premise is to think of our work withinternal clients in terms of dating orcourtship. We hope to attract our internalcustomers enough such that they say ‘yes’when we ask them for a first ‘futures’ date. Ifwe perform well on this first date, analogousto going for a cup of coffee, we can thenask permission for a second date, perhapsthe equivalent of dinner. If we perform wellon that, we get to do progressively deeperand more interesting work, provided we‘deliver the goods’ of the early simpler datesor tasks. Experience suggests this approachis a viable one – my own tasks havegenerally become more involved,interesting, and futures-oriented over time. Akey dynamic that makes this especiallysuitable for the organisational world is theneed that internal clients have for savingface or maintaining credibility. It will almostalways be politically wiser not to take therisk of doing a futures-related project. Soour sponsors will look for a track record toback them up as they insert their necks inthe political noose. The risk of this approachis that we get caught up in ‘delivering thegoods’ and lose focus on the futuresagenda. Constant checking in with ourselves and our work is the best way toavoid this trap7.”

Finding the right positionThe Henley Centre argues that a strategicfutures group should be ‘separate butconnected’ to the organisational culture.Strategic futures work needs to draw fromdiverse sources, to listen to voices which are

not normally heard, whether inside oroutside the organisation.

This is demonstrated opposite. Thisindependence will serve to enhance thecredibility of the futures work. Through beingsomewhat unaffected by the day-to-daypressures of organisational life, participantsare able to more fully and objectively assess various features of the organisationand environment.

References1. Henley Centre: Understanding Best Practice in

Strategic Futures Work, (2001).2. See Systems Effects, Robert Jervis, 1997.3. Henley Centre: Benchmarking UK Stategic

Futures Work, (2001).4. Henley Centre: Understanding Best Practice in

Strategic Futures Work, (2001).5. Henley Centre: Understanding Best Practice in

Strategic Futures Work, (2001).6. Henley Centre: Understanding Best Practice in

Strategic Futures Work, (2001).7. Andy Hines, An audit for organisational futurists:

ten questions every organisational futurist shouldbe able to answer, Foresight 5.1 (2003).

Think tanks

Strategicfuturesgroup

Opinion formers

Stakeholders

Dissidents

Critics

Advocacy groups

The organisation

Positioning futures groups

Part II:

Case Studies

37

The Limits to Growth, published by the Clubof Rome in 1972 is one of the first high-profile applications of futures thinking toworld issues. It suggested that mankind wasin danger of ‘overshooting’ the capacity ofthe earth, and it lead to great controversy.Since the first report, many trends appear tosupport its findings, and The Club of Romehas subsequently released two updates ofthe report, re-examining the possibleconsequences and available options.

The central aim of the Limits to Growthseries is modeling the interaction betweenthe world population, economy andenvironment. It is a powerful example of thepower of computer simulation to producevaluable insights, and used the tool ofscenarios to express the possible fate ofmankind given different policy trends.

More than 30 years ago, a book called TheLimits to Growth created an internationalsensation. Commissioned by the Club ofRome, an international group ofbusinessmen, statesmen, and scientists, TheLimits to Growth was compiled by a team ofexperts from the US and several foreigncountries. Using system dynamics theory anda computer model called ‘World3’, thebook presented and analysed 12 scenariosthat showed different possible patterns – andenvironmental outcomes – of worlddevelopment over two centuries from 1900 to 2100.

The World3 scenarios showed howpopulation growth and natural resource useinteracted to impose limits to industrialgrowth, a novel and even controversial ideaat the time. In 1972, however, the world’spopulation and economy were stillcomfortably within the planet’s carrying

capacity. The team found that there was stillroom to grow safely while we could examinelonger-term options.

In 1992, this was no longer true. On the20th anniversary of the publication of TheLimits to Growth, the team updated Limits ina book called Beyond the Limits. Already inthe 1990s there was compelling evidencethat humanity was moving deeper intounsustainable territory. Beyond the Limitsargued that in many areas we had‘overshot’ our limits, or expanded ourdemands on the planet’s resources andsinks beyond what could be sustained overtime. The main challenge identified inBeyond the Limits was how to move theworld back into sustainable territory.

The 30-Year UpdateNow in a new study, Limits to Growth: The30-Year Update, the authors have produceda comprehensive update to the originalLimits, in which they conclude that humanityis dangerously in a state of overshoot.

While the past 30 years has shown someprogress, including new technologies, newinstitutions, and a new awareness ofenvironmental problems, the authors are farmore pessimistic than they were in 1972.Humanity has squandered the opportunity tocorrect our current course over the last 30years, they conclude, and much mustchange if the world is to avoid the serious consequences of overshoot in the21st century.

When The Limits to Growth was firstpublished in 1972, most economists, alongwith many industrialists, politicians, and ThirdWorld advocates raised their voices in outrageat the suggestion that population growth andmaterial consumption need to be reduced by

Case study one: Limits to growth

38

Limits to Growth Strategic Futures Planning

deliberate means. Over the years, Limits wasattacked by many who didn’t understand ormisrepresented its assertions, dismissing it asMalthusian hyperbole. But nothing that hashappened in the last 30 years has invalidatedthe book’s warnings.

On the contrary, as noted energyeconomist Matthew Simmons recently wrote,

“The most amazing aspect of the book is howaccurate many of the basic trendextrapolations… still are some 30 years later.”

For example, the gap between rich andpoor has only grown wider in the past three decades. Thirty years ago, it seemedunimaginable that humanity could expandits numbers and economy enough to alterthe earth’s natural systems. But experiencewith the global climate system and the

stratospheric ozone layer have proved them wrong.

All the environmental and economic problemsdiscussed in The Limits to Growth have beentreated at length before. There are hundredsof books on deforestation, global climatechange, dwindling oil supplies, and speciesextinction. Since The Limits to Growth was firstpublished 30 years ago, these problems havebeen the focus of conferences, scientificresearch, and media scrutiny.

What makes Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update unique, however, is that itpresents the underlying economic structurethat leads to these problems.

WORLD3The World3 computer model is complex, but its basic structure is not difficult to

1.4

1.2

1.0

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.01960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

nu

mb

er o

f Ear

ths

ecological footprint of humanity

carrying capacity of the Earth

Ecological footprint versus carrying capacityThis graph shows the number of Earths required to provide the resources used by humanity and to absorb their emissions for each year since 1960. This human demand is compared with the available supply: our one planet Earth. Human demand exceeds nature’s supply from the 1980s onward, over-shooting it by some 20 per cent in 1999. (Source: M. Wackernagel et al.)

Strategic Futures Planning Limits to growth

39

understand. It is based in system dynamics –a method for studying the world that dealswith understanding how complex systemschange over time. Internal feedback loopswithin the structure of the system influencethe entire system behaviour.

World3 keeps track of stocks such aspopulation, industrial capital, persistentpollution, and cultivated land. In the model,those stocks change through flows such asbirths and deaths; investment anddepreciation; pollution generation andpollution assimilation; land erosion, landdevelopment, and land removed for urbanand industrial uses.

The model accounts for positive andnegative feedback loops that can radicallyaffect the outcome of various scenarios. Italso develops nonlinear relationships. Forexample, as more land is made arable,what’s left is drier, or steeper, or has thinnersoil. The cost of coping with these problemsdramatically raises the cost of developingthe land – a nonlinear relationship.

Feedback loops and nonlinearrelationships make World3 dynamicallycomplex, but the model is still asimplification of reality. World3 does notdistinguish among different geographic partsof the world, nor does it represent separatelythe rich and the poor. It keeps track of onlytwo aggregate pollutants, which movethrough and affect the environment in waysthat are typical of the hundreds of pollutantsthe economy actually emits. It omits thecauses and consequences of violence. Andthere is no military capital or corruptionexplicitly represented in World3.Incorporating those many distinctions,however, would not necessarily make themodel better. And it would make it verymuch harder to comprehend.

This probably makes World3 highlyoptimistic. It has no military sector to drain

capital and resources from the productiveeconomy. It has no wars to kill people,destroy capital, waste lands, or generatepollution. It has no ethnic strife, nocorruption, no floods, earthquakes, nuclearaccidents, or AIDS epidemics. The modelrepresents the uppermost possibilities for the‘real’ world.

The authors developed World3 tounderstand the broad sweep of the future –the possible behaviour patterns – throughwhich the human economy will interact withthe carrying capacity of the planet over thecoming century.

World3’s core question is: how may theexpanding global population and materialseconomy interact with and adapt to theearth’s limited carrying capacity over thecoming decade? The model does not makepredictions, but rather is a tool tounderstand the broad sweeps and thebehavioral tendencies of the system.

The driving force: Exponential growthFor more than a century, the world has beenexperiencing exponential growth in anumber of areas, including population andindustrial production. Positive feedbackloops can reinforce and sustain exponentialgrowth. In 1650, the world’s population hada doubling time of 240 years. By 1900, the doubling time was 100 years. When The Limits to Growth was published in1972, there were fewer than four billionpeople in the world. Today, there are morethan six billion.

Another area of exponential growth hasbeen the world economy. From 1930 to2000, the money value of world industrialoutput grew by a factor of 14 – an averagedoubling time of 19 years. If population hadbeen constant over that period, the materialstandard of living would have grown by a

40

Limits to growth Strategic Futures Planning

factor of 14 as well. Because of populationgrowth, however, the average per capitaoutput increased by only a factor of five.

Moreover, in the current system,economic growth generally occurs in thealready rich countries and flowsdisproportionately to the richest peoplewithin those countries. Thus, according tothe United Nations Development Program,the 20% of the world’s people who lived inthe wealthiest nations had 30 times the percapita income of the 20% who lived in thepoorest nations. By 1995 the averageincome ratio between the richest andpoorest 20% had increased from 30:1 to 82:1.

Only 8% of the world’s people own acar. Hundreds of millions of people live ininadequate houses or have no shelter at all,much less refrigerators or television sets.Social arrangements common in manycultures systematically reward the privileged,and it is easier for rich populations to save,invest, and multiply their capital.

The limitsLimits to growth include both the materialand energy that are extracted from theearth, and the capacity of the planet toabsorb the pollutants that are generated asthose materials and energy are used. Thereare limits to the rates at which sources canproduce these materials and energy withoutharm to people, the economy, or the earth’sprocesses of regeneration and regulation.

Resources can be renewable, likeagricultural soils, or nonrenewable, like theworld’s oil resources. Both have their limits.The most obvious limit on food productionis land. Millions of acres of cultivated landare being degraded by processes such assoil erosion and salinisation, while thecultivated area remains roughly constant.Higher yields have compensated somewhat

for this loss, but yields cannot be expectedto increase indefinitely. Per capita grainproduction peaked in 1985 and has beentrending down slowly ever since. Exponentialgrowth has moved the world from landabundance to land scarcity. Within the last35 years, the limits, especially of areas withthe best soils, have been approached.

Another limit to food production is water.In many countries, both developing anddeveloped, current water use is often notsustainable. In an increasing number of theworld’s watersheds, limits have already beenreached. In the US the MidwesternOgalallah aquifer in Kansas is overdrawn by12 cubic kilometers each year. Its depletionhas so far caused 2.46 million acres offarmland to be taken out of cultivation. Inan increasing number of the world’swatersheds, limits have already, indisputably,been exceeded. In some of the poorest andrichest economies, per capita waterwithdrawals are going down because ofenvironmental problems, rising costs, or scarcity.

Another renewable resource is forests,which moderate climate, control floods, arehome to a number of useful species, fromrattan vines to dyes and sources ofmedicine. But today, only one-fifth of theplanet’s original forest cover remains inlarge tracts of undisturbed natural forests.Although forest cover in temperate areas isstable, tropical forest area is plummeting.

From 1990 to 2000, the FAO reportsthat more than 370 million acres of forestcover – an area the size of Mexico – wasconverted to other uses. At the same timethat forests decline, demand for forestproducts is growing. If the loss of 49 millionacres per year, typical in the 1990s,continues to increase at 2% per year, theunprotected forest will be gone before theend of the century.


41

Nonrenewable resourcesA prime example of a nonrenewableresource is fossil fuels, whose limits shouldbe obvious, although many people,including distinguished economists, are indenial over this elementary fact. More than80% of year 2000 commercial energy usecomes from nonrenewable fossil fuels: oil,natural gas, and coal. The undergroundstocks of fossil fuels are going continuouslyand inexorably down.

Between 1970 and 2000, however, eventhough billions of barrels of oil and trillionsof cubic feet of natural gas were burned, theratio of known reserves to productionactually rose, due to the discovery of newreserves and reappraisal of old ones.

Physical capitalNonetheless the stock of reserves is finiteand nonrenewable. Moreover, fossil fuelsuse is limited by the planet’s capacity toabsorb their byproducts after burning, suchas the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.Fossil fuels may be limited by both supplyand sinks. Peak gas production will certainlyoccur in the next 50 years; the peak for oilproduction will occur much sooner, probablywithin the next decade. Energy efficiencyand renewables offer the best prospect for asustainable future.

Materials are another finite resource. Ifpopulation rises, and if those people are tohave housing, health services, education,cars, refrigerators, and televisions, they will

Flows of physical capital in the economy of World3It is important to distinguish between money and the real things money stands for. This figure shows how the economy is represented in World3. The emphasis is on the physical economy, the real things to which the earth’s limits apply, not the monetary economy, which is a social invention not constrained by the physical laws of the planet.

industrial capital refers here to actual hardware - the machines and factores that produce manufactured products.

The production and allocation of industrial output are central to the behaviour of the simulated economy in World3. The amount of industrial capital determines how much individual output can be produced each year. This output is allocated among five sectors in a way that depends on the goals and needs of the population. Some industrial capital is consumed; some goes to the resource sector to secure raw materials. Some goes to agriculture to develop land and raise land yield. Some is invested in social services, and the rest is invested in indutry to offset depreciation and raise the industrial capital stock further.

Counted in GDP

Manufacturedconsumer goods

Resourceoutput

Resource-obtaining capitalmines

Industrial capitalsteel mills

tool factoriesrobots Industrial

output

(+)

Agricultural capitalirrigation systems

tractors

Service capitalschools

hospitals

Agricultural

Serviceoutput

Industrialinvestment

42


need steel, concrete, copper, aluminum,plastic, and many other materials.

But if an eventual nine billion people onearth all consumed materials at the rate of theaverage American, world steel productionwould need to rise by a factor of five, copperby a factor of eight, and aluminum by a factorof nine. From source to sink, the processing,fabricating, handling, and use of materialsleaves a trail of pollution.

Such materials flows are neither possiblenor necessary. Fortunately, growth inmaterials consumption has slowed, and theprospects for further slowing are good. Thepossibilities for recycling, greater efficiency,increased product lifetime, and sourcereduction in the world of materials areexciting. On a global scale, however, theyhave not yet reduced the vast materials flowthrough the economy. At best, they haveslowed its rate of growth.

Another fundamental limit to growth issinks – the capacity of the planet to absorbthe pollution and waste resulting fromhuman economic activity. The mostintractable wastes are nuclear wastes,hazardous wastes (like human synthesisedchemicals), and greenhouse gases. They arechemically the hardest to sequester ordetoxify, and economically and politicallythe most difficult to regulate.

Current atmospheric concentrations ofcarbon dioxide and methane are far higherthan they have been in 160,000 years. Itmay take decades for the consequences ofclimate change to be revealed in meltingice, rising seas, changing currents, greaterstorms, shifting rainfall, and migratinginsects, birds or mammals. It is alsoplausible that climate may change rapidly.

The scenariosUsing the World3 computer model, Limits toGrowth: The 30-Year Update presents ten

different scenarios for the future, through theyear 2100. In each scenario a few numbersare changed to test different estimates of‘real world’ parameters, or to incorporateoptimistic predictions about the developmentof technology, or to see what happens if theworld chooses different policies, ethics, orgoals. Most of the scenarios presented inLimits result in overshoot and collapsethrough depletion of resources, foodshortages, industrial decline, or somecombination of these or other factors.

Under the ‘business as usual scenario’world society proceeds in a traditionalmanner without major deviation from thepolicies pursued during most of the 20thcentury. Population rises to more than sevenbillion by 2030. But a few decades into the21st century, growth of the economy stopsand reverses abruptly.

As natural resources become harder toobtain, capital is diverted to extracting moreof them. This leaves less capital forinvestment in industrial output. The result isindustrial decline, which forces declines inthe service and agricultural sectors. Aboutthe year 2030, population peaks and beginsto decrease as the death rate is drivenupward by lack of food and health services.

A similar scenario assumes that theworld’s endowment of natural resourcesdoubles, and further postulates thatadvances in resource extraction technologiesare capable of postponing the onset ofincreasing extraction costs. Under thisscenario industry can grow 20 years longer.But pollution levels soar, depressing landyields and requiring huge investments inagricultural recovery. The population finallydeclines because of food shortages andnegative health effects from pollution.

Other scenarios address the problems ofpollution and food shortages by assumingmore effective pollution control


43

technologies, land enhancement (anincrease in the food yield per unit of land),and protections against soil erosion.

Even a scenario with these featureshowever, results in overshoot and collapse.After 2070 the costs of the varioustechnologies, plus the rising costs ofobtaining nonrenewable resources fromincreasingly depleted mines, demand morecapital than the economy can provide. Theresult is rather abrupt decline.

If to this scenario one adds reductions inthe amount of nonrenewable resources

needed per unit of industrial output(resource efficiency technology), incombination all these features permita fairly large and prosperous world,until the bliss starts declining inresponse to the accumulated cost ofthe technologies.

This technology programcomes online too late to avoid agradual decline in human welfarethroughout the century. By the endof the 21st century, a stablepopulation of less than eight billionpeople is living in a high-tech, lowpollution world with a humanwelfare index roughly equal to thatof the world of 2000.

But industrial output begins todecline around 2040 because therising expense of protecting thepopulation from starvation, pollution,erosion, and resource shortage cutsinto the capital available for growth.Ultimately this simulated world fails tosustain its living standards astechnology, social services, and newinvestment simultaneously become too expensive.

Transitions to a sustainable world

The world can respond in three ways tosignals that resource use and pollutionemissions have gone beyond theirsustainable limits. One way is to disguise,deny, or confuse the signals. Generally thistakes the form of efforts to shift costs tothose who are far away in space and time.An example would be to buy airconditioners for relief from a warmingclimate, or to ship toxic wastes for disposalin a distant region.

A second way is to alleviate the pressuresfrom limits by employing technical or

Scenario 2: More abundant non-renewable resourcesThis table postulates that advances in resource extraction technologies are capable of postponing the onset of increasing extraction costs. Industry can grow 20 years longer. population peaks at 8 billion in 2040, at much higher consumption levels. But pollution levels soar (outside the graph!), depressing land yields and requiring huge investments in agricultural recovery. The population finally declines because of food shortages and negative health effects from pollution.

Resources

Population

Human welfare and footprint

1900 2000 2100

Pollution Food

Industrialoutput

State of the world

1900 2000 2100

Human ecological footprint

Human welfare index

44


economic fixes. For example, reducing theamount of pollution generated per mile ofdriving or per kilowatt of electricity generated.These approaches, however, will not eliminatethe causes of these pressures. The third way is to work on the underlying causes, torecognise that the socioeconomic system hasovershot its limits, is headed toward collapse,and therefore seek to change the structure ofthe system. World3 can be used to test someof the simplest changes that might result froma society that decides to back down fromovershoot and pursue goals more satisfying

and sustainable than perpetualmaterial growth.

Scenario 7 supposes that after2002, all couples decide to limittheir family size to two children andhave access to effective birth controltechnologies. Because of agestructure momentum, the populationcontinues to grow for anothergeneration. But the slowerpopulation growth permits industrialoutput to rise faster, until it isstopped by rising pollution.

Under this scenario, worldpopulation peaks at 7.5 billion in2040. A globally effective, twochildren policy introduced in 2002reduces the peak population less than 10%. Because of slowerpopulation growth, consumer goodsper capita, food per capita, and lifeexpectancy are all higher than in thescenario where the world’sendowment of natural resources was doubled.

But industrial output peaks in2040 and declines. The largercapital plant emits more pollution,which has negative effects onagricultural production. To sustainfood production, capital must be

diverted to the agricultural sector. Later on, after 2050, pollution levels aresufficiently high to have negative impacts on life expectancies.

But what if the world’s people decide tomoderate not only their demand for children,but also their material lifestyles? What if theyset a goal for themselves of an adequate butnot excessive standard of living?

If the model society both adopts adesired family size of two children and sets afixed goal for industrial output per capita, itcan extend somewhat the ‘golden age’ of

Scenario 9: World seeks stable population and stable industrial output per person, and adds pollution, resource, and agricultural technologies from 2002In this scenario population and industrial output are limited, and in addition technologies are added to abate pollution, conserve resources, increase land yield, and protect agricultural land. the resulting society is sustainable: nearly 8 billion people live with high human welfare and a continuously declining ecological footprint.

State of the world

1900 2000 2100

Resources

Population

Human welfare and footprint

1900 2000 2100

PollutionFood

Industrial output

Human ecological footprint

Human welfare index


45

fairly high human welfare between 2020and 2040 in the previous scenario. Butpollution increasingly stresses agriculturalresources. Per capita food productiondeclines, eventually bringing down lifeexpectancy and population.

These changes cause a considerable risein consumer goods and services per capitain the first decade after the year 2002. Infact, they rise higher and faster than they didin the previous run, where industrial growthwas not curtailed. But this economy is notquite stabilised. It has an ecologicalfootprint above the sustainable level, and itis forced into a long decline after 2040.

The world of Scenario 8 manages tosupport more than seven billion people atan adequate standard of living for almost30 years, from 2010 to 2040, but duringthat time the environment and soils steadilydeteriorate. To remain sustainable, the worldin this scenario needs to lower its ecologicalfootprint to a level below the carryingcapacity of the global environment.

Scenario 9: world seeks stablepopulation and stable industrial output perperson, and adds pollution, resource andagricultural technologies from 2002.Moving in this direction, in another scenariothe world seeks stable population and stableindustrial output per person, and addspollution, resource and agriculturaltechnologies starting in 2002.

In this scenario, population andindustrial output are limited as in theprevious run, and in addition technologiesare added to abate pollution, conserveresources, increase land yield, and protectagricultural land. The resulting society issustainable: nearly eight billion people livewith high human welfare and a continuouslydeclining ecological footprint.

Under this scenario, the world decideson an average family size of two children

and sets modest limits for materialproduction, as in the previous scenario.Further, starting in 2002 it begins todevelop, invest in, and employ thetechnologies that increase the efficiency ofresource use, decrease pollution emissionsper unit of industrial output, control landerosion, and increase land yields until foodper capita reaches its desired level.

The society of this scenario manages tobegin reducing its total burden on theenvironment before the year 2020; fromthat point the total ecological footprint ofhumanity is actually declining. The systembrings itself down below its limits, avoids an uncontrolled collapse, maintains itsstandard of living, and holds itself very closeto equilibrium.

In a final scenario, the sustainabilitypolicies of the previous scenario areintroduced 20 years earlier, in 1982.Moving toward sustainability 20 yearssooner would have meant a lower finalpopulation, less pollution, morenonrenewable resources, and a slightlyhigher average welfare for all. Under thisscenario, population levels off just above sixbillion instead of eight billion. Pollutionpeaks at a much lower level and 20 yearssooner, and interferes less with agriculturethan it did in the previous scenario. Lifeexpectancy surpasses 80 years and remainshigh. Life expectancy, food per capita,services per capita, and consumer goodsper capita all end up at higher levels thanthey did in the previous scenario.

Two general insights from this effort arevalid and relevant. The first insight is therealisation that waiting to introducefundamental change reduces the options forhumanity’s long-term future. The secondinsight is that the model world’s goal forindustrial goods per capita, even with all theameliorative technologies, cannot be

46


sustained for the resulting population ofmore than seven billion.

The final four scenarios also suggestsome general conclusions:

A global transition to a sustainablesociety is probably possible withoutreductions in either population orindustrial output.A transition to sustainability will requirean active decision to reduce the humanecological footprint.There are many choices that can bemade about numbers of people, livingstandards, technological investment, andallocations among industrial goods,services, food, and other material needs.There are many trade-offs between thenumber of people the earth can sustainand the material level at which eachperson can be supported.The longer the world takes to reduce itsecological footprint and move towardsustainability, the lower the populationand material standard that will beultimately supportable.The higher the targets for populationand material standard of living are set,the greater the risk of exceeding anderoding its limits.

Suggested guidelinesThe authors do suggest a few generalguidelines for what sustainability would look like, and what steps we should take to get there:

Extend the planning horizon. Base thechoice among current options much moreon their long-term costs and benefits.Improve the signals. Learn more aboutthe real welfare of human populationand the real impact on the worldecosystem of human activity.

Speed up response time. Look activelyfor signals that indicate when theenvironment or society is stressed.Decide in advance what to do if problems appear.Minimise the use of nonrenewable resources.Prevent the erosion of renewable resources.Use all resources with maximum efficiency.Slow and eventually stop exponentialgrowth of population and physical capital.

47

The Mont Fleur Scenario Process wasundertaken in South Africa from 1991-92, inthe context of deep political and socialdivisions caused by apartheid. It broughtpeople together from a range oforganisations and backgrounds to thinkcreatively about the future of their country,and provided an innovative approach andan important contribution in the midst of adeep conflict.

Provided here are excerpts from thescenario process as originally published inthe South African newspaper The WeeklyMail and The Guardian Weekly, in July1992. It offers an invaluable example to the importance of providing foresight intimes of change, the power of buildingscenarios, and offers advice for constructinga scenario process.

Context and participantsThe historical context of the project isimportant to understanding its impact. Ittook place during the period betweenFebruary 1990, when Nelson Mandela wasreleased from prison, and the AfricanNational Congress (ANC), Pan AfricanCongress (PAC), South African CommunistParty (SACP), and other organisations werelegalised, and April 1994, when the firstall-race elections were held. During theseyears, dozens of forums were set up inSouth Africa, creating temporary structuresthat gathered together the broadestpossible range of stakeholders (politicalparties, civic organisations, professionalbodies, government departments, tradeunions, business groups, etc.) to develop anew way forward in a particular area ofconcern. There were forums to discusseducation, housing, economic policy,

constitutional matters, and many otherareas. They ranged from informal, off-the-record workshops to formal, publicnegotiations. The Mont Fleur project wasone type of forum that, uniquely, used thescenario methodology.

The purpose of Mont Fleur was ‘not topresent definitive truths, but to stimulatedebate on how to shape the next ten years’.The project brought together a diversegroup of 22 prominent South Africans –politicians, activists, academics, andbusinessmen, from across the ideologicalspectrum – to develop and disseminate aset of stories about what might happen intheir country from 1992 to 2002.

Summary of the scenariosThe scenario team met three times in aseries of three-day workshops at the MontFleur conference centre outside Cape Town.After considering many possible stories, theparticipants agreed on four scenarios thatthey believed to be plausible and relevant:

Ostrich, in which a negotiatedsettlement to the crisis in South Africa isnot achieved, and the country’sgovernment continues to be non-representative.Lame Duck, in which a settlement isachieved but the transition to a newdispensation is slow and indecisive.Icarus, in which transition is rapid but the new government unwiselypursues unsustainable, populisteconomic policies.Flight of the Flamingos, in which thegovernment’s policies are sustainableand the country takes a path ofinclusive growth and democracy.

Case study two: The Mont Fleur scenarios

48

The Mont Fleur scenarios Strategic Futures Planning

The group developed each of these storiesinto a brief logical narrative. A 14-pagereport was distributed as an insert in anational newspaper, and a 30-minute videowas produced which combined cartoonswith presentations by team members. Theteam then presented and discussed thescenarios with more than 50 groups,including political parties, companies,academics, trade unions, and civicorganisations. At the end of 1992, its goalsachieved, the project was wrapped up andthe team dissolved.

What the project was and was notThe ideas in the Mont Fleur team’s fourscenarios were not in themselves novel.What was remarkable about the project wasthe heterogeneous group of importantfigures delivering the messages, and howthis group worked together to arrive at thesemessages. The approach was indirect andthe results subtle.

Mont Fleur did not resolve the crisis inSouth Africa. The project, along with

other, non-scenario forum processes,contributed to the establishment of acommon vocabulary and mutualunderstanding. The shared language ofMont Fleur extended beyond thenegotiating elite, and was thus able toinclude such dialogues as an exhortationto Flamingos in a Sunday churchsermon and a concern raised aboutLame Duck on a rural radio phone-in.This kind of common understanding,together with many other factors,promoted agreement upon a settlementto the crisis.The participants did not agree upon aconcrete solution to the country’sproblems. They reached a consensus onsome aspects of how South Africa‘worked’ on the complex nature of thecrisis, and on some of the possibleoutcomes of the current conditions.More specifically, they agreed that, giventhe prevailing circumstances, certainstrongly advocated solutions could notwork, including armed revolution,continued minority rule (Ostrich), tightlycircumscribed majority rule (Lame Duck),and socialism (Icarus). As a result of thisprocess of elimination, the broad outline of a feasible and desirable outcomeemerged (Flamingos).The process was not a formal,mandated negotiation. Rather, it was aninformal, open conversation. At the firstworkshop, some of the participantsexpected to encounter difficulties inagreeing on anything. Over the courseof the meetings, they talked until theyfound areas of shared understandingand agreement, several of which wererelevant to the formal negotiations whichwere occurring simultaneously.It did not deal with the differencesamong the participants. Negotiation

YES

YES

YES

NO

NO

NO

Flight of the flamingoesInclusive democracy and growth

Is the transition rapidand decisive?

Lame duck

Is a settlementnegotiated?

Currentnegotiations

Incapacitatedgovernment

Non-representativegovernment

Are the government’s policiessustainable?

IcarusMacro-economicpopulism

Ostrich

Logic of the scenarios

Strategic Futures Planning The Mont Fleur scenarios

49

tends to focus on identifying thepositions and interests of the parties andthen finding a way to narrow orreconcile these differences. The MontFleur process, in contrast, only discussedthe domain that all of the participantshad in common: the future of SouthAfrica. The team then summarised thisshared understanding in the scenarios.The aim of such non-negotiatingprocesses is, as Marvin Weisbord, anorganisational consultant, has stated, to‘find and enlarge the common ground’.

Results from the projectThe Mont Fleur project produced severaldifferent types of results: substantivemessages, informal networks andunderstandings, and changed ways ofthinking. The primary public output of theproject was the group of scenarios, each ofwhich had a message that was important toSouth Africans in 1992.

The message of Ostrich was that a non-negotiated resolution of the crisis wouldnot be sustainable. This was importantbecause elements of the National Party(NP) government and the businesscommunity wished to believe that a dealwith their allies, instead of a negotiationwith their opponents, could be sufficient.After hearing about the team’s work, NPleader FW de Klerk was quoted assaying, “I am not an Ostrich.”Lame Duck’s message was that a weakcoalition government would not be ableto deliver and therefore could not last.This was important because the nature,composition, and rules governing theGovernment of National Unity (GNU)were a central issue in the pre-electionnegotiations. The NP wanted the GNU tooperate subject to vetoes and other

restrictions, and the ANC wantedunfettered ‘winner takes all’ rules. LameDuck explored the boundary in a GNUbetween compromise and incapacitation.Icarus warned of the dangers of a newgovernment implementing populisteconomic policy. This message, comingfrom a team which included several ofthe left’s most influential economists,was very challenging to the left, whichhad assumed that government moneycould be used to eradicate povertyquickly. The business community, whichwas worried about Icarus policies, foundthe team’s articulation reassuring. Thefiscal conservatism of the GNU was oneof the important surprises of the post-election period.The simple message of Flight of theFlamingos was that the team believed inthe potential for a positive outcome. In acountry in the midst of turbulence anduncertainty, a credible and optimisticstory makes a strong impact. Oneparticipant said recently that the mainresult of the project was that: “Wemapped out in very broad terms theoutline of a successful outcome, which isnow being filled in. We captured the

Ostrich scenario

Non-representative Government

STANDOFF

International community“too radical”

International communitytolerant

Government inflexibleLiberations movementmaintains the bottom line

Negotiations break down

“Moderate alliance” government

Resistance

Repressionand violence

Negative businessclimate

Economicstagnation

The crisis worsens

Back to negotiations

No socialdelivery

50


way forward of those committed tofinding a way forward.”

The second result of Mont Fleur was thecreation of informal networks andunderstandings among the participants – aninfluential group from across the politicalspectrum – through the time they spenttogether. These connections cumulativelyprovided the basis for the subsequentcritical, formal agreements.

The third result, the least tangible yetmost fundamental, was the change in thelanguage and thought of the team membersand those with whom they discussed theirwork. The Mont Fleur team gave vivid,concise names to important phenomenathat were not widely known, and previouslycould be neither discussed nor addressed.At least one political party reconsidered itsapproach to the constitutional negotiationsin light of the scenarios.

Why the project produced these resultsHow can such a simple story-telling processproduce these kinds of results? A scenarioconversation has several characteristics thatmake it powerful.

The scenario process is logical. There isno place in the core of a scenarioconversation for positions or values.Instead the discussion is about facts andlogic: can you convince your fellowteam members that the story you areputting forward is plausible? The process is open and informal.Building scenarios can be creativebecause the process is ‘only’ abouttelling stories, not about makingcommitments. This allows people todiscuss almost anything, even taboosubjects. Early in the Mont Fleur process,one of the ANC members proposed astory called ‘The Chilean Option:Growth through Repression’ (a play onthe ANC slogan, ‘Growth throughRedistribution’). This precipitated animportant discussion which would nothave had a place in a normal left-wingparty political debate.The process is inclusive and holistic. Astory about the future has to be able toencompass all aspects of the world:social, political, economic, cultural,ecological, etcetera. Moreover, theprocess of telling several storiesencourages people to surface and listen

Lowest common denominator decision-making- Indecisive policies- Purports to respond to all, satisfies none

Uncertainty because of long transitionInvestors hold back Insufficient growth

Insufficientgrowth

Social crisisinadequately

addressed

The vicious circle of political, economic and social crises worsens

Long transition- Political settlement- All party coalition- Sunset clauses

Capacity constraints and imbalances

Populargovernment

Some form of authoritarian rule?

Macro-economic populism (fly now, crash later)

Massive socialspending spree

Economic andsocial collapse

Lame Duck scenario Icarus scenario

Strategic Futures Planning The Mont Fleur scenarios

51

to multiple perspectives. In discussing afundamentally unpredictable future,there is no one truth; this accordsrespect for the points of view of all ofthe participants (in a conflict, one ormore parties is usually not being heard)and it allows everyone to see more ofthe world. The process elicits choices. One of thepremises of scenario thinking is that thefuture is not predetermined and cannot bepredicted, which means, therefore, thatthe choices we make can influence whathappens. In a situation where people feelswept along by overwhelming, inevitablecurrents, this is an empowering worldview. During its transition, South Africawas haunted by apocalyptic visions; thescenario stories helped people rationallythink through their options.The process is constructive. A scenarioconversation turns the attention of agroup away from the past and present –where the debate is often mired –toward the future. It shifts from lookingfor ‘The Solution’ to exploring differentpossibilities, and from the separateinterests of the parties (as in negotiation)to their common ground (the future inwhich they all will live).

Pierre Wack, who pioneered scenarioplanning at Royal Dutch/Shell, said thatscenario work involves ‘the gentle art ofreperceiving’. A scenario process canfacilitate shifts in language, thinking, andaction. Each of these reframings provides fora more constructive basis for working ondifficult issues.

What scenarios meanPlausible scenarios must be internallyconsistent and based on credibleinterpretations of present trends. Scenariosare a strategic planning tool. They identifywhat has to be done to secure a desiredoutcome. Scenarios imply the future is notfixed but can be shaped by decisions andactions of individuals, organisations, andinstitutions. Scenarios are used to avoidbeing caught off guard; to challengeconventional mental maps about the future;to recognise signs of change; and to teststrategies in different circumstances.

There is no standard method ofdeveloping scenarios. It is a creative processthat harnesses the expertise of the peopleinvolved. For a successful scenario planningexercise it is important to set up a skilled teamwho can understand the present; identify thepredictable elements about the future; identifyplausible possible pathways into the future;and recognise divergent views.

Overleaf is a chart of the Mont Fleurscenario process.

Conditions necessary for a successful scenario effortThe most important element required for the success of this type of scenario project is proper timing: are public leaders ready to talk together about the future? If there is readiness, then two other things becomecritical: how the process is led and how the team is composed. The process must be:

Inclusive democracy and growth

Political settlementFacilitating internationalenvironment- Regional stability- Access to world markets

Good government- Clear and consistent policies- Efficient: not corrupt- Observes macro-economic constraints

Broad participation- People have a say

Sustained economic growth- Business is confident- Investment is high- Employment increases

Social reconstruction- More social investment- Decrease in violence

Flight of the Flamingos

52


Credible. The people who convene andlead the project must be broadlyrespected. They must be seen asadvocates of the process and not of anyparticular position or outcome.Informal and reflective. A scenarioexercise is a ‘Track Two’ process, whichmust be separate from (parallel or priorto) ‘Track One’ formal negotiations. Thepower of scenario work comes from itsstatus as an exercise in reflection andimagination, which is not directly linkedto action. Therefore, although it ispossible to follow on from constructingscenarios (what might happen) tocreating a vision (what we want tohappen), and then to planning action(what we will do), these processes mustbe carefully insulated from one another.Inclusive. The value of these projects is that they build the common groundamong different perspectives andparties. It is therefore important to be as inclusive as possible. The Mont Fleurproject was unfortunately diminished by the fact that the Inkatha Freedom

Party wasn’t included, which has been an important dissenter in South African politics.

The team needs to be:

Respected – composed of leaders whoare influential in their own communitiesor constituencies. They need not holdofficial positions.Open-minded (in particular, notfundamentalist) and able to listen to andwork with others.Representative of all the importantperspectives on the issues at hand. Anystakeholder must be able to see theirpoint of view represented by someoneon the team, though they need not beformal representatives of these groups or positions.

ConclusionThe Mont Fleur exercise demonstrated theinformal, indirect scenario approach to be aninnovative and productive method for asociety in conflict to approach the future. Thisapproach is different from andcomplementary to negotiation. As this projectdemonstrates, it is a promising tool for futureattempts to reach public consensus.

First team workshopSeptember 1991

Research Research

Consultation Consultation

Second team workshop November 1991

Third team workshop March 1992

Team members’ ideas

Brainstorming 30 initial ideas

9 preliminary schools

Assessment

4 draftscenarios

Refinement

4 finalscenarios

Dissemination, debate, and use

The scenario process

53

This 1997 report provides an overview of theresearch on some key economic, social,technological and other trends likely to affectthe UK in the period 2001 – 2006. The worklooks at likely trends in: income, wealth andother inequalities; science, technology andinnovation; public ethics, values andattitudes; demography; the labour market;the environment and the UK’s position in theworld. Contrasts between trends affecting theUK, Europe and the rest of the world havealso been included where relevant datacould be found.

A range of representative sources wasconsulted in compiling this synopsis, whichincludes futures work undertaken by UK andforeign organisations from business,academia and non-governmentalorganisations (NGOs), as well asgovernment sources. The intention was tofocus on those trends that are reliablypredictable, linear or otherwise grounded inevidence, avoiding projections based onpure speculation or trends subject tovolatility. Key trends in this excerpt are fromthe five year timeframe (2001 – 2006),although the report continues to providetrends for 2006–2011.

This is particularly interesting because ofthe pertinence of many of the observations!

Key UK trends: 2001–2006DemographyIn common with the rest of Western Europe,the UK’s population will continue to ageover the next decade, although the fullesteconomic/social impacts of a ‘top-heavy’population distribution are unlikely to be feltuntil after 2015. The changing age balanceof the UK population is less marked than

some other countries which face more rapidageing and a more serious fall-off in thebirth rate.

By 2005, around 36.5% of the UKpopulation will be paying tax on theirworking income to support the 22% ofthe population then in retirement.The average life expectancy for UK menis likely to have risen to 78 years by2006, while the average life expectancyfor women will have risen to around 81by the same time.If past trends continue there is likely tobe an increase in the number of births togirls under 16. Births in this age grouphave been rising since 1993 to thehighest recorded level ever in 1996.However births are strongly correlatedwith a range of factors includingemployment opportunities, educationalperformance between 11 and 16, aswell as sex education. These factors mayreverse the trend in the UK.

Information and communications technologiesMultimedia and communicationstechnologies, including the internet, mobilephones and digital television, are likely tohave become entrenched as an integral partof daily life in the UK over the next fiveyears. For example, it is predicted that by2003 60% of all households in the UK willhave internet access (either through a PC ordigital TV connection) and the total numberof internet access terminals (PC, TV andmobile phones) in the UK may exceed thenational population. This may be comparedagainst the current figure of 450 million

Case study three: Cabinet Office UK trends2001-2006

54

Cabinet Office UK trends 2001-2006 Strategic Futures Planning

regular internet users globally, a figureexpected to grow to two billion by 2005.

By 2005, several billion domesticappliances and other machinery arelikely to be connected to the internetthrough the use of automated wireless technologies.Digital television is expected to be in use by 15 million subscriber homes by 2005.Because of the spread of digital TV, upto 50% of Internet access may bethrough non-PC devices within three years.On-line retailing (e-commerce) is likelyto become more popular, with internet-based sales rising to around £2.5bn to£3bn by 2003. By 2006, up to 10% of medicalprescriptions could be administered overthe internet.The value of the European wireless datamarket alone is projected to exceed theEuropean voice data market by 2006.Computer memory with average memoryaccess time of one nanosecond will bein use by 2005. Molecular computingwill also be in use by 2005. By 2005 Artificial Intelligence (AI), virtualreality and advanced ‘data mining’technologies will allow organisations toassimilate data and solve problems wellbeyond the range of today’s machines.

HealthIndividual health looks set to remain animportant issue within the UK. Although theincidence of communicable diseases is likelyto decline, chronic diseases and mentalillnesses are likely to increase in prevalence.The growing prevalence of trade and travel,global warming and social trends will ensurethat new infectious diseases continually

emerge or re-emerge, often through food-borne routes.

Childhood ill health resulting fromsocio-economic factors has been rapidlyrising but the policy challenges arebeing recognised. Nearly one third ofUK children currently live in poverty (asdefined by relative measures), comparedwith one in ten in 1979. This is knownto correlate with ill health. Thegovernment has committed itself to usingfinancial and other means to takesignificant numbers of children out ofpoverty and hence reduce poverty linkedill-health. There are some tentative signsthat the longer-term trend may now bein reverseIncreasing rates of drug use and abuseamong young people are likely tocontinue. The number of 15 to 24 year-olds using drug treatment agencies in1997 was 50% higher than in 1993.All the genes in the human genome are likely to have been mapped by2005, leading to new understandings of and perhaps treatments for humangenetic diseases.It is thought that electronic implants ableto stimulate the muscles in disabledpeople will be in use by around 2004. The number of people taking out privatehealth insurance in 1997 had risen by4% compared with 1990 figures. In thesame period, the total value of privatemedical insurance claims rose by over50 per cent. These trends look set to continue.

HousingA combination of economic, social andpolitical drivers will continue to affect wherepeople live, buy houses and what they canafford to buy. The average UK household

Strategic Futures Planning Cabinet Office UK trends 2001-2006

55

size is currently 2.34 people. This isprojected to drop to 2.29 by 2006. Onereason for this is that young people whohave tended to stay longer with their parentsover the last 20 years will becomeindependent sooner. As a consequence ofthis, and other factors, the number of privatehousehold dwellers is expected to have risenfrom 49,131,000 to approximately49,783,000 by this time.

Married couples will continue to makeup the greatest percentage of householddwellers in England (44%) whilst around31.4% of dwellers will be lone persons.Some 6% of dwellers will be loneparents and approximately 10.4% willbe cohabiting couples. The remainder of households will be other ‘multi-person’ houses.The number of first time house-buyersunder 25 dropped from 28.1% of allfirst time buyers in 1988 to 16% in1999. In 2006, it is expected that themajority of first-time mortgage borrowerswill remain in the 25–34 age bracket.The number of mortgage borrowersearning between £10k and £15k perannum has dropped from 28.2% to13.2% of all borrowers between 1988and 1999. The number of borrowersearning over £25k has risen, in thesame time, from 14.% to 50% of all borrowers.Initial repayments as a percentage ofincome for first time buyers haveremained at around 14% since 1971.

CrimeThe British Crime Survey indicates anaverage overall increase in crime over thelast 20 years (1981 to 1997) but a declineover the last few years in both burglary andvehicle crime. Criminal organisations are

already adapting to the opportunitiesoffered by the internet and the vulnerabilitiesof increasingly networked societies. Thenotion of organised crime may also change,as the internet offers greater individualopportunities for empowered small actors toperpetrate serious crimes withdisproportionately large effects.

The increasing use of technology in thehome (arising from factors such as thegrowing numbers of tele-workers) maymake domestic premises more attractivetargets for burglary.However, the move towards a 24-hoursociety will mean less predictablepatterns of domestic movement, whichmay discourage some criminals.Electronic services (such as onlinebanking), knowledge and information,and identity will increasingly becometargets for criminals, especially ifphysical property is made a moredifficult target.

Transport and infrastructureIt is estimated that between 221 and237 million people will be using UK airtravel services per year by 2005. Between 2001 and 2006, an annual 1.69% increase in road traffic is anticipated.By 2006, car ownership in the UK islikely to be at 0.47 cars per person.By 2006, demand for UK rail services is projected to have risen by 23% since 2000.

The environmentUK air quality is getting cleaner, though theimpact of greater extremes of weather willcontinue to cause sporadic social disruption.The change in the earth’s atmosphere andgradual increase in average temperature will

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Cabinet Office UK trends 2001-2006 Strategic Futures Planning

mean that the UK is likely to endure bouts ofextreme weather on a more frequent basis.Heavy rains resulting in floods and drysummers resulting in drought willundoubtedly be more common.

Road traffic NOx emissions arepredicted to drop by 46% by 2005, due to implementation of a variety of EU Directives. Although CO2 emissions will rise slightlyin the latter half of the coming decade,they will then fall again. The UK totalCO2 emissions currently stand ataround 154 million tonnes carbon (MtC)per annum. This is expected to fall to151.7 MtC by 2005. By 2005, lead emissions will decreaseby 90% compared to 1995 levels.

Employment and the national economyThe UK economy is expected to continuegrowing at its recent average rate of 2 –2.5% per annum until 2006. This growth,and a parallel expected growth inproductivity, will come through theacquisition of new labour skills, greaterspecialisation and the application of newtechnologies. By 2006, almost one-third ofthe UK workforce are likely to be employedin the distribution and transport sector, andaround one quarter employed in businessand miscellaneous services, emphasising thecontinued decline in traditionalmanufacturing industries.

By 2006, only 14.5% of the UKworkforce is expected to be employed inmanufacturing, around 6% in construction and about 2% in theprimary/utilities sector.By 2006, 18% of the UK workforcecould be working as managers andadministrators, with around 14%

working in clerical and secretarial rolesand something like 12% in personal andprotective services.A projected 9.5% of the UK workforce islikely to be working as factory operativesor in unskilled manual roles, with ananticipated 7.5% in sales roles andaround 5.75% in other roles. By 2005, it is likely that basic IT literacywill be regarded as an essentialprerequisite for skilled employment.Union membership looks set to continueits decline as workers become moregenerally skilled, educated and inclinedtowards individual negotiation ofemployment terms.Countries like Russia, India and Chinaare likely to suffer an IT ‘brain drain’, asmany of their most skilled workforcecome to work in the Western world.

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In its first year, the Scottish Futures Forumhas adopted a wide range of approaches tohelp the Parliament become more porous tonew ways of thinking. A range of futurestechniques has been used to stimulate publicpolicy debate: scenarios, Delphi, visioning,gaming, surveys, futures cafes and systemsmapping, as well as the more traditionalcollaboration tools of workshops, drama,networking and lectures.

IntroductionThe Scottish Futures Forum is helping todevelop the knowledge transfer agenda inScotland. It has created new informationpathways into the decision-making process,a process which will be further developed in 2007. Our ‘Supporting Local Futures’programme will encourage localcommunities to think, learn and plan fortheir own specific futures – with, in turn, theforum promoting the social innovationswhich emerge to MSPs (Members of theScottish Parliament) and parliamentarycommittees. Over 1,000 members are nowregistered on the forum’s website. In our firstyear over ten Scottish universities, and manybusinesses have worked with the forum.

As the Parliament approaches its thirdsession the challenge to be open andresponsive to those it serves, and to becreative in planning for the future is asimportant as ever. As this report makesclear, the forum has a role in this processand has made an encouraging start. In thenext four years it will take a more focusedapproach, working closely with MSPs andparliamentary committees to take a futureslook at ‘drugs and alcohol’, ‘environmentalfutures’, and ‘funding the future’.

Our aspiration for the forum is that itwill become a central point for futures

thinking in Scotland – that it will continue toact as a focal point for MSPs, policy makers,academics, businesses and the wider publicto come around the table, to learn togetherin a creative environment, and to test andpromote new forms of social innovation forthe future.

The report illustrates how the forum has blended in-depth futures work with open participation events, producinginstructive debates and creative learning all round.

Key highlights of the forum’s work overits first year include the Future LectureSeries, the Positive Ageing Project, andPublic Policy Debates. Future work includesa project on future policies around illegaldrugs and alcohol.

The future lecture seriesThe forum was asked by MSPs and others todevelop a high quality lecture series. Theforum wanted to bring international experts,known for their ‘big ideas’ and in somecases controversy, to Holyrood, to share anddebate their views with MSPs.

In March 2006, Geoff Mulgan, directorof the Young Foundation and former headof policy and strategy at Ten Downing Street,spoke about the need for more socialinnovation in Scotland. His inspiring lecture,co-hosted with the International FuturesForum, described how Scotland was ideallyplaced to be creative and innovative whentesting new public policies:

“Scotland should now be in the forefront of(social) innovation. It is the right size, hasthe right traditions, and sits in the right partof the world... and it has a very strongnetwork of organisations involved in socialenterprise, like the school for social

Case study four: The Scottish Futures Forum

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The Scottish Futures Forum Strategic Futures Planning

entrepreneurs based in Fife. The potentialpayback is very substantial.”

In September 2006, academic ProfessorHoward Gardner, spoke at the forum abouthis ‘GoodWork’ Theory and his most recentbook Changing Minds. Howard Gardner isone of the world’s leading thinkers.Originally a psychologist, much of his mostfamous work has been done in the field ofeducation. His interests are, however,extremely wide and embrace many of thekey issues facing contemporary society. Inthe mid-1990s, along with other renownedacademics, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi fromHarvard and William Damon from Stanford,Gardner founded what has become knownas the ‘GoodWork’ project. It began from a consideration of the relationship betweenhigh-level performance in whatever field and social responsibility; in other words,between excellence and ethics. In a worldwhere conditions are changing rapidly andwhere market forces are often the onlydecisive factor, the project promotes theconcept of GoodWork to establish whatassists its development.

An education specialist, Gardnerexplored with the forum the relationshipbetween ethics and excellence describinghow ‘work’ can be both socially responsibleand personally fulfilling. In his lecture,educationalists from across Scotland alsoheard Gardner launch his new theory, ‘FiveMinds for the Future; the kinds of minds thatpeople will need if they – if we – are tothrive in the world during the coming era’.

In June, Right Reverend Alison Elliot,former moderator of the Church of Scotlandspoke at the forum on the ‘Spirit ofInnovation’. Drawing on her time and travelsas moderator, Alison stressed the need forus to look for innovation in the mostmarginalised areas of society. “Often the

most marginalised in society have thesharpest focus on what needs to be donewhen producing innovative public policy”,she said. This has, in part, led the forum toconsider the establishment of a ‘SupportingLocal Futures’ programme, being launchedin 2007; an attempt to bring localcommunities to think, learn and plan fortheir own local futures.

In September 2006, controversialDanish academic Professor Bjorn Lomborgaddressed a packed Garden Lobby at theScottish Parliament. Listed by Time Magazineas one of the top 100 global influences,Lomborg’s lecture, ‘Are We Destroying theFuture?’ generated much debate from theScottish environmental lobby. Lomborg’sdescription of the ‘Copenhagen Consensus’sparked some lively debate; global warminghe told the audience is important, especiallyto the developing world but, there are otherareas, such as the prevention of Aids /HIV,education and poverty that should be seenas a priority.

US Senator George Mitchell, the UnitedNations prize-winning peacemaker, spoke tothe forum in October 2006, examining ‘AFuture for International Peace?’. SenatorMitchell spoke to MSPs and a high levelbusiness audience about his humanitarianapproach to resolving conflicts anddiscussed lessons for Scotland in dealingwith problems of sectarianism.

The forum is very pleased by the successof the futures lecture series. The presidingofficer, George Reid MSP, has said thatsharing big ideas and new thinking atHolyrood is important to the Parliament’scommitment to being open and accessibleto the wider community. The Forum willannounce its forthcoming lecture speakersearly next year when we can look forward tohearing more high level speakers and more‘big ideas’.

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The ‘positive ageing’ projectConscious that Scotland will have anincreasingly ageing population in the future,‘positive ageing’ has been a core themerunning throughout the forum’s project workthroughout 2006. The Parliament’s EqualOpportunities Committee spokesperson onageing, Sandra White MSP, explained theimportance of the ageing study:

“The fact that by the middle of this centuryover one third of Scotland’s population willbe over 50 years old, presents massivechallenges for policy making today. It is vitalthat Scotland develops initiatives andpolicies to ensure older people have theopportunity to positively contribute to societyin the way they want. That is why Scotland’sFutures Forum futures study into positiveageing has been so important; to get policymakers thinking now about the positiveimpact having an older population couldmake and to challenge government andbusinesses to prepare the way. The forum’sageing project is a good piece of workwhich has used creative methods tostimulate a positive debate in Scotland.”

The Forum Project Board, led by LordSutherland, developed a hybrid futuresapproach, using various techniques. The‘learning to emerge’ was consideredthrough a scenario exercise, published inJanuary 2007. Here are some of thesessions that contributed to the developmentof the forum’s positive scenarios.

Power to the people“If you love your Granny, don’t buy her acomputer for Christmas!” was the feeling ofone older person attending the forum’s‘Power to the People Conference’. The eventsaw 150 elderly people in the parliamentarychamber discussing how older people can

better participate in public life and describehow older people are a real asset to societyand not the burden they are often portrayedto be. Her point was that many olderpeople increasingly feel alienated by the fastpace of change and usage of technology.The forum believes many older peoplewould appreciate help, particularly aroundthe internet, texting and digital television; forexample, ‘peer training’ schemes and inter-generational schemes, where young peopleteach older people about technology inreturn for advice on life issues.

This conference heard from SAGA, ThePOWER Inquiry, DWP, Anti-Apathy, Microsoftand Ofcom. Some very interesting pointscame from this lesson around the barriersthat older people experience in engaging indecision-making processes.

The drama of getting olderDuring stage three of the forum’s projectinto Positive Ageing, the Foxtrot TheatreCompany was commissioned to produce aninteractive play that would help stimulatediscussion with community groups. Theaudience was very open and someinteresting findings came from the sessions.In general, people were quite optimisticabout getting older. An overwhelmingmajority felt their generation had a bettertime of it than their parents’ generation.However, an overwhelming majority felt theirchildren’s generation was not likely to haveas good an old age as they themselveswould. This perhaps reflects a sense of whatsome commentators have described as ‘agolden age of seniors’, arguing that as thelargest and wealthiest consumer group thereis a lot to look forward to for them.However, younger generations did not haveso much to look forward to, for example,inability to afford proper housing, loss ofprofessional pension, the changing nature of

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‘family’, etc. The play told the story of acouple, Bill and Shirley and her friendChristine. The play profiled each of thecharacters, all with different attitudes toageing. As a couple Bill and Shirley hadvery different views on retirement and theirrelationship started to suffer. Christine, whileworried about health in older age, wasdetermined to live an active life, and spendher savings travelling to see her family inNew Zealand. By the second scene, theplay moved on to profile the characters in2026. Shirley had had a stroke and Billwas her carer. Christine was living insheltered accommodation. The scenedescribes a very positive conversationbetween the three via digital television. Theplay ‘paused’ between each scene and,through a facilitator, drew the audience intoa discussion. The actors, in character, alsoentered into the discussion. As aparticipation tool, the theatre proved verypowerful.

Attitudes to retirementThere was a real sense that preparing forretirement took time. The shift from work toretirement was massive, often sudden andabrupt. Most people felt things need not bethat way. More care and attention should betaken to help people move from work toretirement over a phased period. People feltemployers should take more time to preparetheir staff for retirement, as much as ten to15 years ahead of actually retiring. Peoplewanted to see reduced hours options,flexible working, time off for volunteering,and the chance to find new interests andskills outside working life. There was agenuine mixture of opinion about workingbeyond retirement. Some very much lookedforward to it, as the character Bill said, “If Inever see another column of numbersagain, I would be happy”. Others for either

social or financial reasons wanted tocontinue working or try something new, likestart their own businesses. According toBarclays Bank, the number of middle-agedpeople starting businesses has grown by50% over the past decade and nowaccounts for almost a quarter of newbusinesses. This variance in opinion reflectsthe forum’s belief that government andbusiness should look together at how toprovide a range of options for peoplemaking the transition in work from their 50sto 60s and 70s, to ensure they can makethe right choices for themselves.

A business perspective (possibility spaces)The forum has been conscious of a dearthof information on how Scottish businessesare preparing for an older population, andworkforce. Using a ‘possibility space’technique, the forum brought together anumber of businesses to consider theirattitudes to pensions, employment practices, finance and the environment. Thepossibility spaces produced a very richdialogue with business and their conclusionshelped inform the finding of the overallageing project.

An academic perspective (Delphi exercise)The forum commissioned a Delphi exercise, where three respected academicsfrom Scottish Universities were asked to give their futures view of ageing. The essays concentrate on three key areas and heavily influenced the forum’s ageing project.

An overall philosophical view of ageingin the future.An economic view of ageing in the future.A learning and training perspective ofageing in the future.

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Young Time Lords face the future (gaming)In October 2006, through a series of gamingand drama exercises, the forum worked with100 young people aged between 14 and 18.With Young Scot, a very dynamic andsuccessful organisation, the forum spent theday discussing young people’s attitudes topersonal finance and getting older. It becameclear that young people understood the needfor more financial literacy skills. It wasinteresting to note that at the beginning of thesession, around 85% of the young people feltthey received sufficient financial literacyeducation at school and over 90% of themsaid they expected to have some kind ofpension provision by the time they were 40-years-old. However, by the end of the day, itbecame clear that very few of the youngpeople actually knew what a pension was,and many thought that the government wouldprovide them with a pension post retirement.At the end of the session, over 80% of theyoung people said they would welcome morefinancial planning skills and education. Mostof the young people did not think they wouldhave personal debt, excluding a mortgageand car, by the time they were 30 and yet,over 90% of young people said, financialplanning was of little interest because it wastoo far in the future. Over 50% said, if given£1,000 today, they would spend the wholesum on luxury goods. Around 45 per centsaid they would save a portion of the money.

Public policy debateAnother key role for the forum during 2006has been to stimulate public policy debateby bringing the futures work of partnerorganisations to Holyrood. Below are threeof the highlight events from 2006.

The Tomorrow NetworkThe Tomorrow Network in Scotland, anetwork made up of the Scottish Executive,

The Tomorrow Project, Careers Scotland andScottish Enterprise, brought together 100people from various sectors to considerwork in the 21st century. The ScottishCouncil Foundation’s work on how to takean asset-based approach to education, work and retirement was hugely useful inthis session.

From this event four specific questionscame to the fore, which provided the focusof the ageing project.

1. A pension crisis has been high on thepublic agenda recently but what are theattitudes of Scottish business and youngpeople to work, pensions and savings inthe future?

2. It has been clearly established that anincrease in skills leads to increasedproductivity in the workplace. What newskills and re-training will be required byan ageing population, to meet the needsof work in the future?

3. Many have argued that ‘crisis’ is only aterm to be used if society does notadjust its practices now to meet theeconomic and social realities of thefuture. How do we enable and empowerpeople to meet this new environment?

4. How can the skills of an ageingpopulation, through, for example,volunteering, mentoring and other formsof ‘work’, best contribute to society inthe future?

Scottish Expo Fair 2006Scottish Policy Innovation Forum (SPIF) aimsto foster new ideas and ways of thinkingabout public policy. Some have argued thatthere has been less policy innovation thanmany people expected since devolution.Scottish distinctiveness has often meant notfollowing the line of England, rather thanstriking out on its own. The SPIF was created

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to meet this need for bottom-up thinkingabout Scottish solutions to Scottishproblems. Its role is to bring togetherexisting knowledge and ideas and stimulatenew ones, across the public service,academia and civil society. The FuturesForum was pleased to partner SPIF inrunning The Scottish Policy Expo whichshowcased to MSPs some of the mostinnovative policy ideas coming out ofScotland’s universities. These related to theshape of society, the balance of theeconomy, the structure of the public sectorand public services delivery. The expohelped stimulate public policy debate onissues such as tackling social inequalities,and pursuing a distinctive Scottish economicdevelopment programme and reform of thepublic sector.

Goodison Group in ScotlandThe Goodison Group, which was foundedin England about five years ago, takes itsname from its founder, Sir NicholasGoodison. Sir Nicholas was the chairman ofthe London Stock Exchange, chairman of theTSB Group and deputy chairman of LloydsTSB. The forum was delighted to partner theGoodison Group in Scotland (GGiS) to runan event to consider policy innovation. TheGGiS is an independent group of peoplecoming together to stimulate and supportwide-ranging discussion on the hugelyimportant issue of lifelong learning, with aparticular focus on post compulsory learningand skills in Scotland. While the primaryfocus of the group is quite explicitlyeconomic, the social and culturaldimensions are very important. The purposeof the GGiS is to take a longer-term view ofthe issues involved in education andtraining, outside the normal pressures andtimescales of government strategies and initiatives.

Planned projectsAlcohol and drugs are very topical andthere is a good deal of new and provokingwork emerging, in particular, the RSACommission’s forthcoming report on IllegalDrugs and the Impact on Communities andPublic Policy’. During 2007, the forum’sfocus will be on stimulating new debatesaround alcohol and drugs. Of course,across Scotland, a wide range of views existon the best way to tackle issues aroundalcohol and drugs. The forum does notdevelop policy, but uses fresh approaches tolook over the horizon and stimulate publicpolicy debate on the near and long-termactions that should be taken.

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The approach of the year 2000 was used as an opportunity by the EuropeanCommission to reflect upon futuredevelopments that could affect theiractivities. The Scenarios for Europe 2010were drawn up to ‘stimulate debate insideand outside the commission on the future of European integration; and to develop a tool to put the union’s policies andstrategies into perspective and contribute to their improvement.’

Provided below is a brief summary ofeach of the five scenarios, followed by adetailed description of the method used. Itserves as an interesting example of foresightin the context of a large regionalorganisation, and offers an interestingmethod for producing scenarios.

Triumphant markets‘Third Industrial Revolution’ will be marked,accompanied by an explosion ofentrepreneurship (‘virtual enterprise’).Unchallenged leadership of the US model in technological innovation will also bepresent and enterprise organisation(shareholder value). Also, strong emphasison self-reliance but widespread feeling ofinsecurity. Residual family solidarity.Materialism and consumerism common.There will be greater acceptance of socialexclusion. Regions versus centralgovernments (national and EU) will showtension and there will be ‘inequality ofgovernance’ across localities and socialgroups. People will be increasinglywithdrawing from public life and there willbe mistrust of collective action. There will bea downsized public sector and outsourcingof public services will be common. Theprivate sector may take over traditionalpublic functions.

The hundred flowersThis scenario will be marked by things suchas: trend growth slowdown; exploitation ofsome technologies (for example, bio-technologies); devolution of largeorganisations; and, explosion of one-personoperations and informal networks. Belief inneighbourhood solidarity and local self-helpwill be strong and women will be particularlyactive. Paid work will be less important.Common will be anti-consumerism and ‘do-it-yourself’, but enthusiasm for informationand communication technologies will grow.‘Green’ values will be prevalent. Therecould be a crisis of large bureaucracies andnation-states. Creation of new states mayhappen. Noticeable will be participation atlocal level, apathy at national and Europeanlevel (especially large states). Mistrust ofgovernment and big business (includingmedia) will be common. Other trendsinclude: disobedience, tax evasion andboycotts. National administrations aredeemed to be largely incapable of reformand bureaucracies are seen to be largelyirrelevant. Public functions performed byassociations and private organisations.

Shared responsibilities‘Third Industrial Revolution’ will be facilitatedby policies for re-orientation of technologiestoward the users (public/privatepartnerships). Stakeholder model ofenterprise will be apparent: ‘win-win’flexibility. There will be a renaissance ofsocial/ecological awareness, belief inresponsibility and civic solidarity, andwidespread tolerance of diversity. Newpoliticians will be at odds with oldbureaucrats. There could be a Europeaninitiative for reform of public sector and abroad consensus both for the reform of the

Case study five: EC Scenarios Europe 2010

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EC Scenarios Europe 2010 Strategic Futures Planning

public sector and social institutions. Anyreform will be according to the principles of: decentralisation, transparency andresponsibility. There will be an importantminority – ‘active citizens’ who will beconditioning political and community life.There will also be an increased role forevaluation and control mechanisms relative to regulation and implementation(and shrinking of traditional ministries could be widespread).

Creative societiesThis scenario would be marked by: trendgrowth slowdown; strong political impulsionto develop green technologies and trainingtechnologies. There would be reorganisationof enterprises around democratic/egalitarianlines and there would be revolutionarysocial/ecological awareness. Reactionagainst structures dominated by ‘economicrationality’ would be common. Violentuprisings (in a number of countries) couldbe sparkled by an EU coordinated plan tocut social protection. Europe-wide forumswould be formed to discuss the future ofEuropean societies. We would see a crisisand reform of nation states around socio-ecological priorities. There would beincreasing participation in community andpolitical life following a period of socialupheaval. NGOs would be active in theprovision of some public services(education, training, assistance to low-income people).

Turbulent neighbourhoodsA trend would see growth slowdown withEurope increasingly at a disadvantage inworld competition, especially in hi-techsectors. Political interference in re-organisation of large enterprises would beseen and there would be increasing risk-aversion. There would be a pervasive fear of

the future but also a ‘back to roots’intolerance (including gender backlash).Also likely: creeping racism, and concernwith economic and even physical security(urban crime, mafias, war in the nearabroad). There could be a political centre ofgravity towards right-wing populism(‘Fortress Europe’) and a re-legitimisation ofthe state as well as diffuse support ofauthoritarianism. Media may beencouraging a fear of diversity. Security mayprevail over transparency. Obsolescence ofpublic services could also be prevalent1.

MethodologyThe building of the Scenarios Europe 2010followed a methodology called ShapingActors-Shaping Factors. Its development hasbenefited from regular contacts between theForward Studies Unit and numerousinternational institutes active in futurestudies. In particular, we would like tomention the French Conservatoire Nationaldes Arts et Métiers, the Dutch instituteClingendael, the Anglo-American GlobalBusiness Network, the German think-tankEUCIS, the association FuturiblesInternational and strategic think-tanks oflarge companies such as Shell. The Unitalso maintains close contacts with planningand future studies departments in EUMember States and large internationalorganisations, such as the OECD.

The basic sequencing of the constructionof the Scenarios Europe 2010 is similar tothe methods developed and used byFuturibles and CNAM and sometimesreferred to as the école française (analysis ofvariables, partial scenarios, globalscenarios). The brainstorming methods thatwere used are closer to the Anglo-Saxontradition. Furthermore, the objective of theexercise and the fact that it was organisedwithin an institution like the European

Strategic Futures Planning EC Scenarios Europe 2010

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Commission sometimes led the unit to breaknew ground in regard to the existingmethods. This included the writing up in fullof the partial scenarios as well as thetechnique used for the final selection of theglobal scenarios.

Two stages: partial (theme specific)scenarios and global scenariosGiven the broad scope of the project, it was decided from the beginning that the construction of the scenarios wouldinvolve two separate stages resulting in twodistinct products, the first of which wouldprovide the material for the second.Specifically, the first stage of the projectaimed at producing partial scenarios(theme-specific), to be subsequentlyintegrated into the global scenariospresented in this publication.

Production of partial scenariosThe production of the partial scenariosworked as follows. Five themes were chosenfor their capacity to capture and illustratedevelopments relevant for the future ofEurope and its process of integration. Theywere: institutions and governance; socialcohesion; economic adaptability;enlargement of the EU; and Europe’sexternal environment. For each theme aworking group was created, comprising 12to 15 commission officials chosen for theircompetence on the subject and their interestin a scenario exercise. Each working groupwas coordinated by a member of theForward Studies Unit and the coordinator ofthe project was involved in the five groups toensure consistency. A total of over 60officials took part in the exercise. Theprocess was designed so as to encourageparticipants to ‘think aloud’ and for groupdynamics to generate contrasting mentalpictures about the future. At the same time,

to ensure control of the process andconsistency of output, the methodologyfollowed by each working group wasbroadly the same. Specifically, theproduction of the partial scenarios can bedescribed as a six-step process:

1. Kick-off paper: to start the discussion,the coordinators present a paperillustrating the main facts about thetheme under consideration and puttingrelevant questions about the future.

2. Selection of variables: the group holds abrainstorming exercise to put together arather comprehensive list of the variablesthat can have an impact on the themeunder consideration. Each variable issubsequently classified as factor or actor.Factors are defined as the structuraltrends that are considered important inshaping future outcomes (in consideringeach trend, one should bear in mindalso the possibility of shocks andinflection points). Actors are defined asthose players that can influence factorsin an interactive fashion. Throughreflection and discussion, the initial listof variables (typically numbering around50) is reduced to a more manageableset (ten to 15).

3. Construction of ‘mini-scenarios’2. Aquestionnaire is submitted to eachmember of the working group, in whichhe is asked to sketch alternative paths ofevolution for each shaping actor orfactor. The answers are elaborated toyield comparable sets of alternatives. Inpractice, this means producingalternative ‘stories’ (each summarized ina two-line sentence) for eachactor/factor. These receive the name of‘mini-scenarios’. Figure 1 shows theactors/factors selected for the theme ofeconomic adaptability and the titles of


1. Demography 2. Technology/Organisation 3. Culture/Values 4. GlobalisationLow population growth,medium participation growth

No major breakthrough.Downsizing. Continuingdespecialisation of Europe inhigh-tech

Increasing individualism.Fear of the future

Globalisation continuing,sectoral resistances, localdifficulties

Low population growth, highparticipation growth,openness to emigration

No major breakthrough.Increasing dualism. Increasingdespecialisation of Europe inhigh-tech

Strongly increasingindividualism. Social andgeographicalsegregation. Power oflobbies

Globalisationaccelerating. “Borderlessworld”

Low population growth, lowparticipation growth, closureto emigration

Major breakthrough. Europeinnovating and/or catching up

Renaissance ofsocial/ecologicalawareness.Regions/localitiesexperiments

Globalisatin slowingdown, trade conflicts,regional blocks

Major breakthrough. Increasingtechnologically-inducedinequality. Europe catching up

Revolt of the bottom halfagainst globalisation

Global crisis

Major breakthrough. Increasingtechnologically-inducedinequality. Europe fallingbehind

5. Macroeconomic policies (EMU) 6. Industrial policies 7. Social and employment policies 8. International regulationsBroad EMU with limitedcoordination and no major tensions

“Horizontal” policies(competitiveness approach)

Continuing “decremental”adjustment of social protection

Mixed strength of institutions

Broad EMU with limitedcoordination and major tensions

Acceleration of deregulationand privatisation

Strong labour market deregulation.Residual welfare state

Mixed strength of institutions.Increasing regionalism

Broad EMU with strongcoordination

“New” industrial policies(focus on users)

Strong resistance against welfarestate reform

Weak institutions. Reversal ofliberalisation

Failure of EMU “Mercantilistic” industrialpolicies

Radical reform of welfare state:universalism and individualincentives

Strong global institutions(economic security council)

9. European integration 10. Public actors 11. Trade unions 12. NGOs 13. Transnational corporationsBraod enlargement, deep integration

Governmentsconstrained byinterdependence andlack of consensus

Continuing decline.Persistence in protected sectors

Not significanteconomic role

TNCs increasingly important

Broad enlaregment,shallow integration

Downsizing ofgovernment

Terminal decline Significanteconomic role

Delining corporative advantage ofTNCs (multinational SMEs)

Narrow enlargement, deep integration

Institutional review Decline reversal (newcorporatism)

Very significanteconomic role(taking overwelfare state)

Polital reaction against TNCs

Failure of enlargement Paralysis

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Figure 1


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the ‘mini-scenarios’ corresponding toeach actor/factor.

4. Selection of the ‘pivot variables’. Theactors/factors considered with theiralternatives are still too numerous toallow the formation of contrastedpictures of the future. Each group is

asked to concentrate on a smallernumber of variables, which are mostliable to make the difference betweenthe possible versions of the future. Tofacilitate the choice each factor/actorcan be ranked along two dimensions:

Figure 2

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uncertainty and impact. Those variablesthat score the highest on bothdimensions are selected as ‘pivotvariables’. This allows concentrating onfive to six variables instead of ten to 15.

5. Selection of the scenarios. Taking intoaccount only the pivot variables, thegroup selects a number (typicallyranging from six to eight) of plausibleand consistent combinations of the‘mini-scenarios’. This means that eachcombination contains one mini-scenario(in some cases a mix of two mini-scenarios) for each ‘pivot variable’ andthat the mini-scenarios are considered tofit well with each other across thevariable spectrum. An appropriate title ischosen for each combination. Figure 2presents two examples drawn from theworking group on economicadaptability: the white boxes indicate theminiscenarios which are retained foreach of the pivot variables (note thatonly five variables are consideredinstead of the 13 in the previous Figure).Once the working group is satisfied withthe selection of combinations, the other(non-pivot) variables are attached toeach combination, as it subjectivelyseems fit. Finally, through a process ofmerging and elimination, thecombinations selected are reduced tofive. Each of these five combinations ofmini-scenarios provides the ‘skeleton’ fora different scenario.

6. Writing of the partial scenarios. Basedon the ‘skeleton’ of mini-scenarios, ascript (about 3,000 words long) isproduced to give narrative form to eachpartial scenario.

Production of global scenariosEach working group having produced a setof five partial scenarios (five scenarios on

governance, five scenarios on socialcohesion, etc.), the Forward Studies Unitmoved to the second stage of the scenariosproject, namely the production of globalscenarios. This stage was coordinated andimplemented by the three authors of thepresent publication. They were assisted by asteering group including ten other colleaguesfrom the Forward Studies Unit and otherdepartments in the European Commission,all of which had been already involved in thefirst stage. The production of the globalscenarios involved a number of steps.

Consistency ranking of the combinationsof partial scenarios: in principle, eachglobal scenario can be seen as acombination of five partial scenarios,one for each theme. The theoreticalnumber of such combinations, however,is extremely high. An apposite techniqueis used to rank the possiblecombinations for overall consistency, sothat only those combinations exhibiting asufficiently high degree of consistencyare retained for further consideration3.Selection of the global scenarios.Concentrating on the combinationsretained from the consistency exercise,the steering group retains the eight toten more salient and consistentcombinations. This means not only thatthe partial scenarios contained in eachcombination should not appear tocontradict each other, but also that thereshould be some salient feature thatclearly distinguishes each combinationfrom the others. The combinations arereduced to five through a process ofmerging and elimination. These fivecombinations provide the ‘skeletons’ forthe global scenarios.Analysis of the key drivers of the globalscenarios: based on a rereading of the


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partial scenarios, a number of keydrivers, recurring in the different workinggroups, are selected. The role of the keydrivers is succinctly described for eachglobal scenario. Contradictions andlacunas are identified and eliminated.Test presentation of ‘skeleton’ scenarios.Based on the ‘skeleton’ for the globalscenarios, a visual presentation isprepared for the purpose of discussionwith test groups, both inside and outsidethe institution (ten presentations wereorganised within the commission and 20were given to outside audiences fromEurope, the US and Asia.) Criticisms andcomments were collected, examinedand, if deemed appropriate,incorporated in the scenarios.Writing of the global scenarios. Basedon the ‘skeleton’ combinations of partialscenarios and the analysis of key drivers,a script (about 4,000 words long) isprepared to give a narrative form toeach global scenario.Finalisation of the global scenarios. Thedraft global scenarios are subjected totwo rounds of screening and discussion:first by the authors, then within thesteering group. Following that, a finalversion of the global scenarios isproduced for publication.

The two-stage process described above wasimplemented for the first time in theconstruction of the Scenarios Europe 2010,with innovations being introduced practicallyat each step. While conceived with the specificsubject(s) in mind, the process has proved tobe flexible enough to accommodate a widerange of possible topics4. The Forward StudiesUnit continues to work on applications of theShaping Actors-Shaping Factors method witha view to further improving its scenario-building capabilities.

References1. Cabinet Office – Generic Scenarios: A Strategic

Futures paper (December 2002), Ruth Cousens,Tom Steinberg, Ben White & Suzy Walton.

2. Certain experts on prospective methodology callthe phase mentioned in paragraphs (3) to (5)‘morphological analysis’. The American F. Zwickyused it for the first time in 1947. For more infor-mation consult the book From Anticipation toAction. A Handbook of Strategic Perspective byMichel Godet.

3. The technique works as follows. Let gov, coh,eco, enl, wld stand for the groups of scenarioson governance, social cohesion, the economy,enlargement and the world environment, respec-tively. The ten possible couples of groups are:gov/coh, gov/eco, gov/enl, gov/wld, coh/eco,coh/enl, coh/wld, eco/enl, eco/wld, enl/wld. Aseach group contains five scenarios, each coupleof groups consists of 25 (five x five) combina-tions of two individual scenarios, for a total of250 combinations. Each of these combinationsis assigned a score for consistency, ranging fromzero to five. At this point one can calculate ameasure of the overall consistency of each theo-retically possible combination of five partialscenarios, by summing up the individual scoresof the ten couples of scenarios contained ineach combination. An electronic spreadsheetprogramme allows easily to perform the calcula-tions and to rank the combinations starting fromthose with the highest overall score (50).

4. For instance, the Unit’s Shaping Actors-ShapingFactors methodology was used by theNorwegian government for the scenario exercisecode-named Norway 2030 (started in 1998).

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The Local Government Association (LGA)promotes better local government andrepresents the interests of local authorities inEngland and Wales. It works with and for itsmembers, various different types of localauthorities, to ‘realise a shared vision oflocal government that enables local peopleto shape a distinctive and better future fortheir locality and its communities’. Its futurestoolkit for local governments was producedin the context of the emphasis on forwardthinking in the Modernising Governmentwhite paper and the Cabinet Office reportProfessional Policy Making For The TwentyFirst Century (1999). The LGA recognisedthat local authorities will be required to startlooking ahead, to become more preventativeand to shift the balance of effort away fromcuring problems to anticipating andpreventing them.

This introduction to the LGA FuturesToolkit serves as a useful example of lookingto work futures thinking into policy at a locallevel, including a discussion of thechallenges that this might present.

Before the reorganisation of 1974, localgovernment in England was almost a no-goarea, but since then each new governmentseems to have regarded it as ripe forintervention. Change in local governmenthas almost become endemic as newstructures, new ways of working, changes inresponsibilities, etc. have been introduced ina continual stream of reform. At the sametime local authorities have facedconsiderable criticism for failing to attractthe interest of their electorates and to delivereffective services, they have also faced tightbudgetary controls, the loss of some of theirtraditional functions and the imposition ofnew responsibilities often without extra

resources to provide them effectively. In theface of this onslaught local authorities havequite reasonably concentrated on the short-term, responding to new demands as theyhave been placed on them.

The origins of FuturesworkPerhaps because even more threats haveemerged, such as the removal ofresponsibility for education and thepossibility of regional assemblies, whichappear to question the very existence oflocal government, the Local GovernmentAssociation, the English local authoritiescollective body, identified a need to look tothe longer term.

“Most of the LGA’s work is concerned with‘here and now’ issues: influencinggovernment in the short-term, lobbying foramendments on Bills and providingguidance notes and circulars fromgovernment departments. But much is likelyto change over the next five, ten,15 yearsand so it is very important to think about thelonger term.1”

Some success in thinking ahead had alreadybeen achieved:

“Good policy planning and lobbying bylocal government in the run-up to the 1997general election led to the prospective localgovernment legislation, to the replacementof Compulsory Competitive Tendering withBest Value and the innovative ‘NewCommitment’ pathfinder projects2.”

To build on this success and to think aboutwhat local government might be doing in adecade’s time the LGA embarked in early1999 on a new policy priority Futureswork. It

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The LGA Futures Toolkit Strategic Futures Planning

was seen as important for local government“to be setting the agenda rather than justreacting to it,” and to be seen as innovativeand influential3.

The aim of the programme is to explorethe roles that local authorities andcouncillors might play within theircommunities in the future. Five initial themeswere selected for examination in the Springof 1999:

patterns of local governance;new ways of service delivery;effective public services;finance; andthe information society.

A series of workshops involving people fromthe business, voluntary and academiccommunities as well as local governmentexamined these themes concluding thatlocal authorities would face many questionsabout their role and the way they shouldoperate over the next ten years. TenChallenges to Local Government wereposed as a result of these discussions4. Thechallenges were intended to prompt localauthorities to discuss the issues they raisedand encourage them to consider ways inwhich local government should respond.The challenges were:

The challenge of global change,particularly in relation to localeconomies, the environment and theimplications of the enlargement of theEuropean Union.New needs and new forms of exclusion,related to changing demographic andsocial patterns and the growth ofinformation technology, which it wasargued could produce a new divisionbetween the information rich and theinformation poor.

Rising expectations on the part of thepublic which may be expected to spillover from the market sector and bringnew demands on to local authorities.Sustainable solutions to problemsinstead of the tendency to look for aquick fix which was too often seen in the past.Centralisation or community leadership,which derives from the tension in thegovernment’s modernisation programmebetween improving national standardsand the development of local community.Appropriate structures for joined upgovernment and the effective provisionof services which may lead to differentpatterns of delivery.New roles for councillors; new measuresof success in part resulting from newways of testing local opinion.Local government’s core business andparticularly whether direct serviceprovision will be as important in the future.Local financial autonomy andaccountability, including other ways ofraising local revenue such as income ortransport taxation.And the $64,000 question, can localgovernment rise to the challenge?

To further the discussion the LGA GeneralAssembly in December 1999 focused aroundfour propositions designed to encouragedebate about the future of local governmentby the elected members present:

local government needs a new breed of councillor;local government should stop delivering services;there will always be excluded groups;there is no place left for local government.

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The report of these discussions5 suggests arecognition of the need for change but, notsurprisingly, sees a continuing role for localgovernment. Although it is anticipated thatservices will increasingly be provided by arange of providers often outside localgovernment, the role of local authorities ascommunity representatives and leaders isseen as offering them an effective future.

The ten challenges were also noted in aparallel report produced by the Society ofLocal Authority Chief Officers, (SOLACE2000), Rebirth or Stillbirth? Reviewing keytrends and the role of local politics theSOLACE report suggested two alternativescenarios for local government in 2010. The‘Renaissance’ scenario sees local authoritieswho are responsible for the strategiccommissioning of services, risk taking,brokerage, planning, advocating,governance, scrutiny, enabling andrepresenting the interests of their areaswhereas ‘The Pits’ sees them as bankrupt,bureaucratic, boring, non-performing,directed, demotivated, not valued, derided,disaffected, Public sector shelf-stackers. Inorder to achieve a renaissance it is arguedlocal authorities will need to addressfundamental changes; failure to do so ismost likely to lead to ‘The Pits’ andinevitable oblivion.

The Futures ToolkitIn order to help authorities in facing thesechallenges the LGA decided to develop aFutures Toolkit containing resources to assistthem and it was at this stage that CUDEMwas invited to become involved. CUDEMwas identified as an appropriate partnerbecause members of the research groupwere involved in the MA in Foresight andFutures Studies offered by the University, theonly such course in the UK. “The purposesof the toolkit were:

to highlight some of the drivers of change;to save councils reinventing the same wheels;to provide guidance on how questions(how we can stimulate local discussionand debate);to help to prompt what if questionsabout the future6.”

A working group composed of the directorof strategy at the LGA, two localgovernment officers and members ofCUDEM met in early 2000 to draw up astructure for the toolkit and to divide upresponsibility for the production of thematerial. Most of the development work was done independently with two moremeetings during the process to coordinateefforts. The toolkit, which was published inJuly 2000, provides:

an introduction which outlines theargument for a longer term view;information on the likely ‘drivers ofchange’ over the next ten to 20 years;three scenarios of the world in whichlocal government may be operating;ways to help authorities think about the future;some case studies illustrating howcouncils are already considering thefuture and its potential implications;materials for use in local workshops;guidance to other sources of help and assistance.

Also included in the toolkit are a video Fastforward to 2010: Issues for tomorrow’scouncil and a CD ROM local-government.net which gives authoritiesaccess to a range of resources.

The introduction to the toolkit outlineswhy local authorities should consider the

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future, both in general terms, pointing outthe changing circumstances in whichauthorities are likely to be operating, and bymore specific reference to requirementsbeing placed on them. Among these theLocal Government Act 2000 that requiresauthorities to consider the long-term‘wellbeing’ of their areas as part of amandate for local political and communityleadership is particularly significant. Sectionfour of the act requires local authorities toprepare a community strategy, the firstcomponent of which is a long term vision forthe area. The need for policy-making to beforward-looking and take a long-term viewof the likely impact of policy is regarded asa core competency of the ModernisingGovernment agenda and the Cabinet Officereport Professional Policy Making For TheTwenty-First Century7.

In preparing the sections for whichCUDEM was responsible we wereconcerned to make the material accessible,which meant limiting the length of thecontent of each driver and methoddescribed and as far as possible expressingthe ideas in easily understood terms. TheDrivers of Change were arranged under thefollowing headings:

demographic change;technology;globalisation;environment and natural resources;work and employment;inequality and social cohesion;patterns of settlement;attitudes and values; andgovernance, the state and politics.

Each was presented on two sides of aseparate A4 sheet to enable it to be easilycopied and used either together orindividually to initiate discussion. Bullet

points were used to illustrate importantissues. Summaries of potential changes andquestions for consideration plus a brief listof resources to provide further informationwere included. Sample slides for use on aprojector were included for each ‘driver’,listing the most likely potential changes andquestions which may arise. Some loss ofdepth would be inevitable in this form ofpresentation but it was considered moreimportant to provide a relatively brief starterfor discussion than a lengthy paper whichwould probably not have been used.

A similar approach was adopted for thefutures methods. Using a classificationbased on the assumptions on which differentfutures methods are based, eight differentmethods for Foreseeing, Managing orCreating the future were outlined:

Foreseeing– extrapolation– causal modelsManaging– scenarios– Delphi exercises– issues managementCreating– brainstorming– creative imagery– community visioning

Each method, again intended to bedescribed on no more that two sides of A4,though presented as part of a pamphlet,was presented using the following headings:

introduction, where the basis and theassumptions behind the method arebriefly explained;requirements, which sets out what isneeded to carry out the method;procedure, where the steps to be takenin running the method are outlined;

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advantages; anddisadvantages.

The intention was to provide users withguidance in using each of the methods toenable them to run their own exercisesrather than rely on outside experts. Thetoolkit also included:

A brief video with two sections: the firstconsisting of a ‘news bulletin’ from 2010envisaging developments such asRegional Assemblies, privatised schoolsand pensions, congestion charging, jointpublic-private ventures for libraryservices and compulsory voting inmayoral elections; and the second ofinterviews with a range of councillorsabout the future of local government.Three scenarios of local government in 2010.– Modernised Markets in which

economic growth is high butfluctuating; society is prosperous butdivided; crime, congestion and theenvironment remain unresolvedconcerns and local authorities havefewer functions and are focused onefficient service delivery in acompetitive environment.

– A New Dimension in which growth isfairly high but stable enabling amore cohesive society and councilsare in the forefront of initiatives torebuild civil society and involvementin governance.

– On The Edge in which growth is low;society is divided with those who canafford to do so purchasing privateservices particularly in education andhealth and local authorities strugglingto improve. Although the scenarioswere well written and in themselvesquite convincing there may be some

doubt about their use by individualauthorities. Rather like the scenarios inthe SOLACE report there is one that islikely to be favoured and a risk thatthe others will be rejected. If this wereto happen the value of these lessdesirable visions of the future, inencouraging authorities to think ofways they might be avoided and themore favourable future achieved,would be lost. This serves toemphasise the care with which thescenario method needs to be used if itis to be effective.

A directory of sources of local dataavailable to authorities.Nineteen case studies of futures orvisioning activities that have been carriedout by a range of councils and groups ofcouncils, either in-house or involving localpartner organisations and communityrepresentatives. The brief details givenindicate that 13 focused on a date fortheir exercise, eight choosing 2020 withothers looking ten years ahead and thefurthest 30; nine included localorganisations and four the localcommunity; two used the Ten Challengesto Local Government as the starter fortheir debate and one focused on Agenda21. Relatively few mention any specificmethods but three used scenarios, twovisioning and two mind-maps, others usedtimelines, guided visualisation andstructured open space methods.

For more resources and information seehttp://www.lga.gov.uk/Publication.asp?lsection=0&ccat=28&id=-A7805B01

References1. Jones D (2001) the LGA Futures Toolkit,

presentation by Doug Jones (head of strategy group, LGA) to LARIA AnnualConference 2001.

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2. Local Government Association (1999) AnIntroduction to Future Workhttp://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/futures/introduction.htm (29/09/99).

3. Jones D (2001) the LGA Futures Toolkit, presen-tation by Doug Jones (head of strategy group,LGA) to LARIA Annual Conference 2001.

4. Local Government Association (1999) TenChallenges to Local Government, LGA circular502/99, August.

5. LGA (2000) Debating Futures? Issues from theLGA General Assembly, December 1999.

6. Jones D (2001) the LGA Futures Toolkit, presen-tation by Doug Jones (Head of Strategy group,LGA) to LARIA Annual Conference 2001.

7. Strategic Policy Making Team Cabinet Office(1999) Professional Policy Making for the TwentyFirst Century

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The UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP)helps organisations assess how they mightbe affected by climate change, so they canprepare for its impact. UKCIP is part of awider programme of research into climatechange being undertaken by Defra(Department for Environment, Food andRural Affairs). It works with its stakeholdersand coordinate research on how climatechange will have an impact at regional andnational levels, providing support andguidance throughout the process for bothstakeholders and researchers, acting as abridge between researchers and decision-makers in government organisations and business.

Its socio-economic scenarios for climatechange impact assessment offer an insightinto why foresight work is needed in thepresent day for a wide range oforganisations. They also provide someconsiderations on how best to go aboutconstructing scenarios for such broad relevance.

IntroductionThe first signs of climate change are alreadyemerging, and will continue into a futurewhich will be very different from today.Enormous challenges are faced in devisingsocio-economic scenarios for theassessment of future impacts and there is very little experience to draw upon. Socio-economic scenarios have not beenwidely used within impacts studies, but this report will serve to encourage their use more widely within the UK ClimateImpacts Programme (UKCIP). The aim has been to develop a scenarios frameworkthrough which stakeholders are able to

reflect upon possible alternative futures and to make sense of what this means for them in the context of climate changeimpacts. This report presents a toolkit, so that studies can select and developsocio-economic scenarios and apply themwithin climate impact assessments. Thereport contains:

1. An explanation of why socio-economicscenarios are required for climatechange impact assessment.

2. A presentation of the national levelscenarios commissioned by theDepartment of the Environment,Transport and the Regions (DETR) anddeveloped for the programme by a teamled by SPRU (Science and TechnologyPolicy Research) at the University ofSussex, and comprising the Centre forSocial and Economic Research on theGlobal Environment (CSERGE), theClimatic Research Unit (CRU) and thePolicy Studies Institute (PSI). They arelinked to scenarios developed for theIntergovernmental Panel on ClimateChange (IPCC) Special Report onEmissions Scenarios (SRES) and thescenarios used in the Department ofTrade and Industry’s (DTI’s) NaturalResources and Environment Panel of theUK Foresight Programme.

3. Guidance on the use of socio-economicscenarios at a regional level, drawing onthe consultation process during thedevelopment of the national levelscenarios, along with commissionedpapers which review initial experience oftheir use in some first stage regionalstudies within UKCIP.

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The UK Climate Impacts Programme Scenarios Strategic Futures Planning

Why socio-economic scenarios are required for climate changeimpact assessmentWhilst the use of climate scenarios as inputs into vulnerability, impact oradaptation assessments is well established,there is far less experience of using socio-economic scenarios. However, studies to assess climate change impactssuffer from serious weakness if by defaultthey merely assume that the projected future climates will take place in a world with a society and economy similar to today.

Difficult though the task is ofconstructing climate scenarios, it is generallyacknowledged that the job of generatingsocio-economic scenarios is even morecomplex. This is because while most aspectsof climate projection are based on well-understood physical processes, there is lessunderstanding of the interactions of factorsoperating in socio-economic systems, whichchange very rapidly. For this reason it is notpossible to construct socio-economicscenarios on the same long-term time-scalesas climate scenarios.

Scenarios are coherent, internallyconsistent and plausible descriptions of possible future states of the world, used to inform future trends, potentialdecisions, or consequences. They can be considered as a convenient way ofvisioning a range of possible futures,constructing worlds outside the normaltimespans and processes covering the public policy environment.

Different social and economic structureswill affect sensitivity to climate change, asthey affect the potential for response andadaptation. The impacts of future climateswill also be fundamentally determined byfuture technology and governancestructures. Here are some illustrations:

Land use change and development ofthe built environment is giving rise toloss of biodiversity irrespective of climatechange. In some cases climate changewill exacerbate these pressures, in other cases it will cause additional direct threats.Flooding events may be worse if there isa larger population living on the floodplain as a result of planning decisions.The effect of climate change on cropyields will depend on how many farmershave planted the crops, whether theirfarm income is dependent on that crop,in turn depending on agriculturalsubsidies, access to technology and so on.Some technological developments, suchas improvement of weather forecasting,may enable better precautions to betaken to diminish vulnerability to extremeweather events.

Approach adopted for the UKCIPsocio-economic scenariosDevelopment of the UKCIP socio-economicscenarios (UKCIP SES) has had the benefitof some new work, but use of scenarios hasonly recently been undertaken significantlywithin public policy in the UK. Officialprojections are generally extrapolated trendsthat, with the exception of demographicdata, rarely exceed 15-20 years ahead. Theland use planning guidance currentlystretches up to 2021. In the private sector,only multi-national enterprises have largestrategic and corporate teams with medium-and long-term planning horizons. Manysmall and medium size enterprises invariablyfocus on the next year or two ahead.However, with the accelerating pace ofchange surrounding globalisation andtechnological development, there has beenincreased recognition that more strategic,

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innovative perspectives can provide usefulinsights. Thus, the UKCIP SES have beenable to draw on the work for the DTI’sForesight Programme, which itself wasrelated to new work developed for the IPCC.

In this work, led by SPRU, a predictiveapproach to the future was avoided indeveloping the scenarios. Instead the futurewas approached in an exploratory way,taking into account the perceptions andknowledge of social and economic playersinvolved. The approach adopted was toemphasise that futures scenarios are a toolfor visioning the future; they are not a set ofprescriptions of how the future will evolve.

Development of the UKCIP SESA review was undertaken of existing scenariowork and this suggested four criteria for thedevelopment of the socio-economicscenarios in this study:RELEVANT (applicable to public and privatesector decision-mmaking). The scenariosshould be of relevance to impactresearchers and constructed in a way thatallows them to be broken down on aregional and/or sectoral scale. The scenarioframework must be flexible enough tointegrate sector-specific options or sub-scenarios. Relevance to stakeholdersinvolves identifying the main variablesinfluencing vulnerability to climate change.CONSISTENT (based on coherentassumptions). Scenarios for impactassessment have to be integrative andcomprehensive. They need to embody aconsistent storyline and set of illustrativequantified indicators.CREDIBLE (not overestimating the rate ofchange). The scenarios should describe aset of credible outcomes that, nevertheless,challenge present-day assumptions. Beingprospective in nature, the scenarios shouldcover a range of alternative outcomes which

is sufficient: to make people think about thefuture; to present options; to examine therobustness of long-term strategies; and toindicate the boundaries of risks and chances.TRANSPARENT (clear exposition ofassumptions). The scenarios need to betransparent in order to be acceptable tostakeholders and impact researchers. Aclear methodology is needed to enabledifferent impact studies to be comparable.

General principles of scenarioconstruction were applied with the following aims.

The basic scenario dimensions It was decided to make the more qualitativedimensions of socio-economic change thebasis of scenario construction. The twodimensions relate to: (1) governance andthe capacity of institutions at different levelsto manage change; and (2) the orientationof social and political values. This choicewas made on analytical grounds, on thebasis of the scenarios literature, and followsa similar set of dimensions chosen in theIPCC SRES socio-economic scenarios. Thechoice has been justified by stakeholderengagement throughout the project butcould of course be different.

Other scenario dimensionsOther dimensions of future developmentsare associated to a greater or lesser extentwith governance and values. Somedimensions such as population develop in apredictable, semi-autonomous way, whileothers such as technology are moredependent on social values and regulation.The task of elaborating storylines in thecontext of these qualitative dimensions has astrong subjective and judgmental flavourwhere stakeholder contributions have been valuable.

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Relevance at national and regional levels The scenarios refer to the UK, but areapplicable at a regional/country level.National indicators have had to besupplemented by expert guidance aboutdifferences between regions within the UK.At the same time, the UK operates in awider European and global context.Therefore, scenarios for developments in the UK implicitly assume characteristicsabout the development of Europe and theworld at large.

Consistency of indicatorsThe need of the climate impacts researchcommunity for a variety of quantifiedindicators meant that a considerableamount of attention has been paid toconsistency within scenarios. No formalmodelling has been undertaken within thisproject, but a set of consistency checks hasbeen applied to ensure that differentindicators (for example, householdformation and economic growth), althoughdetermined through expert judgement, aretelling the same story. Where possible,sector specialists were consulted in choosing relevant indicators and definingindicator values.

Symmetry in treatment of scenariosA balance has had to be struck betweenscenarios which appear plausible becausethey extrapolate current trends, and thosewhich represent a break with the past andare deliberately more challenging to theconventional wisdom. A deliberate decisionwas made to develop a set of four scenarioswhich were clearly separate and distinctive,but which did not break all bounds ofplausibility. Equivalent effort has beendevoted in this study to elaborating eachscenario – a practice recommended to usersof the scenario framework. This does mean

however, that in terms of, for exampleeconomic growth, the scenarios are moreextreme than typical Treasury forecasts.

Drivers and impact domainsIn order to facilitate use by the climateimpacts research community, the expositionof each of the scenarios is based arounddrivers and impact domains. The drivers are:values and policy; economic development;and settlement and planning. The impactdomains are: agriculture; water; ecosystems; coastal zones; tourism; and thebuilt environment.

Four futures scenariosThe four socio-economic scenarios whichhave been developed for the UK by theSPRU team are set in a global context fortwo time-frames: the 2020s and the 2050s.They are based on a review of the largeglobal futures literature which identified fivemain dimensions of change highlighted inprevious scenario planning exercises:

the composition and rate of economic growth;the rate and direction of technological change;the nature of governance; andsocial and political values.

Social and political values, and the natureof governance have been taken to befundamental and independent determinantsof future change. In particular, it wasassumed that economic growth,demographic changes and technologicalchanges are primarily an outcome of therelationship between socio-political valuesand the interests of organisations, althoughthey clearly have an influence on thedevelopment of values and the nature ofgovernance. In addition, economic,

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demographic and technological changesare more easily quantified and amenable tomodelling, whereas values and governancecannot be quantified in any useful way.

The scenario framework segments thefuture ‘possibility space’ into four quadrantsfollowing other work on scenariodevelopment. Here they are defined by a‘values’ and a ‘governance’ axis.The horizontal values dimension capturesalternative developments in core social andeconomic values as they might berepresented in choices by consumers andpolicymakers. At one end of the spectrum(CONSUMERISM), values are dominated bythe drive to private consumption andpersonal freedom. The rights of theindividual and the present are privilegedover those of the collective and the future.Resources are distributed through free andcompetitive markets, with the function ofgovernance limited to guaranteeing tradeand capitalist accumulation. At the otherend (COMMUNITY), values are shaped byconcern for the common good. Theindividual is seen as part of a collective,with rights and responsibilities determined by

social goals. There is greater concern aboutthe future, equity and participation. Civilsociety is strong and highly valued, andresources are allocated through moredeeply managed markets.

The vertical governance dimension aimsto show alternative structures of political andeconomic power and decision-making. Thefuture of governance at the UK and regionallevels will be influenced to a great extent bydevelopments in the European Union, andat the global level. At one end of thespectrum (INTERDEPENDENCE), the powerto govern is distributed upwards, downwardsand outwards away from the national statelevel. International economic, political andcultural relationships strengthen, andregional and national boundaries becomemore permeable. There may be a role forregional decision-making and for regionalparticularities, but this will be in the contextof globalised economic and politicalsystems. At the other end of the spectrum(AUTONOMY), economic and politicalpower is retained at national (NationalEnterprise) and regional (Local Stewardship)levels. Sovereignty is retained over key areasof policy, and the process of economicglobalisation is weakened. Governmentshave greater autonomy in decision-making,and economic, political and culturalboundaries are maintained or strengthened.National and regional development is basedon local capabilities and resources.

These two dimensions generate a set ofassociations which can be applied tounderstanding of changes at a national,sectoral and regional level. The implicationsof the dimensions for each of the fourscenarios are elaborated in this report.Storylines are presented for each scenario,covering: values and policy; economicdevelopment; and settlement and planning.To facilitate their use in climate impacts

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assessments, the storylines have also beendeveloped for key impacts domains,including: agriculture; water; ecosystems;coastal zones; tourism; and the builtenvironment. Quantitative indicators areprovided for demography, economic growthand development, land use change andsettlement patterns.

Initial operationalisation within UKCIPThe UKCIP SES has already provided auseful toolkit for several studies. Thescenarios have been shown to be capableof flexible application for varying purposes,for example:

awareness raising on socio-economicdimensions of climate change impactstudies (South East scoping study, Walesscoping study);providing inputs to the development ofbroad regional strategies and policies asundertaken by organisations such as theRegional Development Agencies andRegional Planning Bodies (North WestUKCIP SES operationalisation study); andas the basis for development ofquantified regional socio-economicscenarios for use in integrated work(Regional Climate Change Impact andResponse Studies in East Anglia andNorth west England – RegIS).

The framework scenarios provide a set ofstandard, unifying assumptions about thebasic social and economic dimensions ofchange. Qualitative assumptions aboutsocial values and approaches togovernance, as well as quantitativeassumptions about economic growth andpopulation change, can be applied across arange of studies. They also provide an

opportunity to take a systematic approach toexploring linkages between local, regionaland global scales.

Knowledge has accumulated on whatare realistic expectations for the applicationof the UKCIP SES, along with both theirstrengths and constraints. New referenceframeworks have also become establishedbelow the UK level. More specifically, inaddition to the establishment of thedevolved administrations in Scotland andWales, developments at a regional level inEngland have proceeded apace in the pasttwo years, particularly with the emergence ofRegional Planning Guidance which virtuallycovers the first time period of the scenarios(2020s). These changes suggest the needfor a link between the scenarios anddevelopments in strategic planning at aregional level.

To complement the scenarios, guidanceis given on their use, drawing on experienceduring phase one of UKCIP for the benefitof next stage studies. The scenarios are notintended to act as a ‘blueprint’. Theresearch team carrying out a sectoral orregional study, by virtue of its expertise, willbe best placed to develop detailedscenarios. Teams will need to considercarefully how to use the scenarios formaximum effectiveness in their studies.Guidance is given on the following issues:selection and modification of the scenariosto the regional scale; their use withstakeholders; quantification of the scenariosat a regional scale; and their integrationwith climate scenarios.

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The UK Foresight programme is managed bythe Office of Science and Technology and‘brings together key people, knowledge andideas to look beyond normal commercialtime horizons to identify potentialopportunities from new science andtechnologies and actions to help realisethose opportunities.’

These scenarios were developed by ateam of researchers at SPRU-Science andTechnology Policy Research, University ofSussex, in consultation with stakeholdersfrom business, government and academia.The framework builds on an extensive reviewof national and global futures scenarios anddraws on work of related scenarios exercisesfrom the Foresight programme and more broadly.

The Foresight Futures 2020 scenariosgive a valuable insight in to how to conducta foresight process which can produce usefulresults for a variety of different stakeholders,and valuable advice for how thosestakeholders can use and apply their work(taken from the UK Foresight Report).

All decisions, whether in business or ingovernment, are taken against an uncertainfuture. Against this background ofuncertainty, business needs to choose morerobust strategies that will bring benefits evenin very different futures. Planning morerobust strategies can be made easier byassessing different options against three orfour possible future scenarios. For exampleif a business is involved in providing officeaccommodation it might want to consider itsstrategies against a scenario where demandincreases in and around London, one wheredemand increases evenly throughout theUK, and also a future where overall demandfalls in the UK.

Getting started can be difficult and toooften we are trapped in our ownpreconceptions of what the future might belike. This publication aims to help start theprocess of planning for the longer term. Itprovides you with four alternative scenariosof change in the UK over the next 20 to 30years against which you can test yourbusiness strategies. Set out at the back ofthis report is guidance for those new tousing scenarios. The guidance covers:

Why use scenarios?How to use scenarios to develop strategies.Five keys to ensure success when using scenarios.

Overview of the scenariosScenarios are not intended to predict thefuture. Rather, they are tools for thinkingabout the future based on four assumptions:

The future is unlike the past, and isshaped by human choice and action.The future cannot be foreseen, butexploring the future can inform present decisions.There are many possible futures,scenarios map a ‘possibility space’.Scenario development involves rationalanalysis and subjective judgement.

The four scenarios in this report describewhat the UK could be like during the period2010–2030. They have been developed byidentifying social and economic trends. Forexample, potential changes in the balanceof control between regional and nationalgovernment. This and a range of otherfactors have been used to build up fourscenarios of the future.

Case study eight: Foresight Futures 2020

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Foresight Futures 2020 Strategic Futures Planning

Figure one shows the four scenarios and conventional development in relation totwo drivers of change: social values (x axis)and systems of governance (y axis). Socialvalues range from individualistic values tomore community orientated values. It takesaccount of social and political priorities andthe pattern of economic activity that resultsfrom them. Systems of governance dealswith the structure of government and thedecision-making process. It ranges fromautonomy where power remains at anational level to interdependence wherepower increasingly moves to otherinstitutions, for example, up to the EU anddown to regional government.

The scenarios are presented as storylineswhich set out some general trends andprovide more detail in a number of areas:

economic and sectoral trends;employment and social trends;regional development;health, welfare and education;the environment.

A synopsis of key drivers and underlyingassumptions is given alongside the

storyline for each scenario. Inaddition, Snapshot 2010, which can be found at the end of thisreport, provides key performanceindicators for each of the scenarios.The indicators were chosen to cover a wide range of economic,social and environmental issues and relate to commonly-usedstatistics, such as the UK Quality of Life indicators1. However, all ofthe storylines and indicatorspresented here are only examples of what may happen in the future.They are intended as tools to help users on their way. The

four scenarios are:

world markets;global sustainability;national enterprise;local stewardship.

World marketsPeople aspire to personal independence,material wealth and mobility to the exclusionof wider social goals. Integrated globalmarkets are presumed to be the best way todeliver this. Internationally coordinatedpolicy sets framework conditions for theefficient functioning of markets. Theprovision of goods and services is privatizedwherever possible under a principle of‘minimal government’. Rights of individualsto personal freedoms are enshrined in law.

National enterprisePeople aspire to personal independence andmaterial wealth within a nationally-rootedcultural identity. Liberalised markets togetherwith a commitment to build capabilities andresources to secure a high degree ofnational self-reliance and security arebelieved to best deliver these goals. Political

Interdependence

Autonomy

Individual

Worldmarkets

Globalsustainability

Localstewardship

National enterprise

Conventionaldevelopment

Community

Figure 1: Four UK futures scenarios

Strategic Futures Planning Foresight Futures 2020

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and cultural institutions arestrengthened to buttress national autonomy in a morefragmented world.

Global responsibilityPeople aspire to high levels ofwelfare within communities withshared values, more equallydistributed opportunities and asound environment. There is a beliefthat these objectives are bestachieved through active publicpolicy and international cooperationwithin the European Union and at aglobal level. Social objectives aremet through public provision,increasingly at an internationallevel. Markets are regulated toencourage competition amongstnational players. Personal andsocial behaviour is shaped bycommonly held beliefs and customs.

Local stewardshipPeople aspire to sustainable levels ofwelfare in federal and networkedcommunities. Markets are subject tosocial regulation to ensure moreequally distributed opportunities anda high quality local environment.Active public policy aims to promoteeconomic activities that are smallscale and regional in scope, and actsto constrain large-scale markets andtechnologies. Local communities arestrengthened to ensure participative andtransparent governance in a complex world.

Guide to using the scenariosGood scenarios help us to understand howkey drivers might interact and affect thefuture. Scenarios go beyond a single bestestimate, or a ‘high’ and ‘low’ projection

either side of this, and encourage us toexplore a number of different, logically-consistent pathways as a way of framingquestions about the future.

Why use futures scenarios?In this guide we illustrate why organisationsshould use scenarios in their planning

Drivers

Social values InternationalistLibertarian

Governance structures WeakDispersedConsultative

Role of policy MinimalEnabling markets

Economic trends

Economic development High growthHigh innovationCapital productivity

Strutural change RapidTowards services

Fast-growing sectors Health and leisureMedia and informationFinancial servicesBiotechnologyNanotechnology

Declining sectors ManufacturingAgriculture

Social trends

Unemployment Medium-low

Income High

Equity Strong decline

Areas of conflict Social exclusionImmigration/emigrationPolitical accountability

Table 1: World markets

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process; how to use scenarios totest and refine strategies; and fivekeys to the successful use of scenarios.

Adding value to strategy-ssettingAlthough scenario exercises varyin their specific aims, theypossess a number of commontraits, which distinguish themfrom more traditional forecastingapproaches. Not only are theylooking into the far future, usuallyone or more decades ahead, butthey also assess developmentsacross a broad area.

The use of exploratoryscenarios approaches should beconsidered when:

the future is uncertain;the ability to adapt to futurechange is restrained or ifadjustments carry the risk ofnegative effects over thelonger term (for example,technological ‘lock-in’);there are opportunities forpositive gains from pursuing‘robust strategies’.

Broadly, the benefits of scenario planning are:

It expands the range of futureoutcomes considered in strategicdecision-making, so strategies aredeveloped to be more robust under avariety of circumstances. This avoids therisk of ‘putting all eggs in one basket’. Itplaces under scrutiny the assumptionsunderlying strategic decisions, forexample about long-term growth

prospects or consumer preferences.The process of engaging with scenarioelaboration itself can be a valuablecontribution to preparing the ground for change. If carried out in an inclusive and positive process, scenarioplanning can encourage self-reflectionwithin the organisation, strengthen

Drivers

Social values NationalistIndividualist

Governance structures WeakNationalClosed

Role of policy State-centredMarket regulation to protect key sectors

Economic trends

Economic development Medium-low growthLow innovationMaintenance economy

Strutural change More stable economic structure

Fast-growing sectors Private health and educationDomestic and personal servicesTourismRetailingDefence

Declining sectors Public servicesCivil engineering

Social trends

Unemployment Medium-high

Income Medium-low

Equity Decline

Areas of conflict UnemploymentPoor public servicesInequality

Table 2: National enterprise


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strategic thinking at all levels, and help overcome organisational rigiditiesand routines.

How can the Foresight Futures2020 scenarios be used?The Foresight Futures can be used in arange of different ways, depending onthe needs of the individuals ororganisations and the resourcesavailable. Users are encouraged todevelop their own conclusions about thefutures, employing the scenarios as astarting point and then elaborating andevaluating them in ways that are in tunewith their needs.

Over the past three years, a numberof organisations have used the scenariosto explore the future. For example, anumber of trade associations have usedthe scenarios to challenge views of futureprospects in their sectors; governmentdepartments have explored strategicpolicy issues and research; and researchprojects, including a number of Foresightprojects, have used the scenarios toassess long-term socio-economic trends.Based on a review of these exercises andinsights from the futures literature, thissection provides guidance on the use ofthe Foresight Futures scenarios. It offerssome ideas and recommendations,without attempting to be prescriptive.

There are two basic approaches tothe use of the scenarios.

Approach 1To use the scenarios to stimulatethought on what the future holds and toconsider the implications for mediumand long-term strategies.

Such exercises are usually carriedout on a small scale with one-offbrainstorming events. Typically they start

with a presentation and discussion of thescenarios, followed by a brainstormingsession to consider the implications.Involving representatives from all interested

Drivers

Social values InternationalistCommunitarian

Governance structures StrongCoordinatedConsultative

Role of policy CorporatistPoliticalSocial and environmental goals

Economic trends

Economic development Medium-high growthHigh innovationResource productivity

Strutural change FastTowards services

Fast-growing sectors Education and trainingLarge systems engineeringNew and renewable energyInformation services

Declining sectors Fossil fuel energyTraditional manufacturing

Social trends

Unemployment Low

Income Medium-high

Equity Improvement

Areas of conflict Structural changeChange of skillsPolitical accountabilityInstitutional rigidity

Table 3: Global responsibility

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parties is crucial for the successof these exercises. So, in abusiness, people frommarketing, finance andproduction should be included,rather than just staff from thestrategy or research unit.Theseexercises are usually:

participative;based on the experience of practitioners;a mechanism to engage keypeople in the developmentof strategy.

Frequently their use depends on a‘champion’ of scenario planningat a senior level of management.Their function is to attract interestand to stimulate creative thinking.

Approach 2To use the scenarios as the basisfor a research-based study on aspecific sector or issue. Thescenarios provide the conceptualframework for the study.

When the scenarios are used in this way the approach typically:

is based on data in additionto expert knowledge;includes scientific methodsas well as consultation;uses the scenarios to assess outcomes.

The main challenge for thisapproach is to combine the ‘soft’ scenariotool with ‘hard’, quantitative methods. Thisreport offers a number of indicators as anillustration of trends, but again these should

only be seen as a starting point. If it seemsappropriate, they can be revised, specifiedor complemented by other indicators.Simple modelling and cross-impact analysis

Drivers

Social values LocalistCooperative

Governance structures StrongLocalParticipative

Role of policy InterventionistSocial and environmental

Economic trends

Economic development Low growthLow innovationModular and sustainable

Strutural change ModerateTowards regional systems

Fast-growing sectors Small-scale manufacturingFood and organic farmingLocal services

Declining sectors RetailingTourismFinancial systems

Social trends

Unemployment Medium-low (larger voluntary sector)

Income Low

Equity Strong improvement

Areas of conflict Land useUnder-investmentEnvironmental restrictions

Table 4: Local stewardship


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can be employed to ensure consistency andanalytical depth.

Five keys to successful use of scenariosThere are five key challenges to meet inorder to use scenarios successfully.These are as follows.

Engaging stakeholdersScenario exercises can only be successful inpromoting creative and unconventionalthinking if those with an interest trust theprocess and are engaged throughout. Toconvince stakeholders of the value of theseexercises, it is vital to:

Be clear about the aims and limitationsof the approach. Scenarios are notaiming to predict the future, nor even toidentify the most likely future. Instead,they map out a ‘possibility space’ toinform the decisions of the present. Thescenarios method is based on subjectivechoices (as is any other approach toexplore uncertain futures) but unlikeother tools, it allows stakeholders toconsider the underlying assumptions andto discuss and challenge how this mightaffect the future.Provide sufficient detail. Experience has shown that the first presentation of the scenarios is crucial. It needs togive enough detail to convey the basiclogic of the scenarios withoutoverwhelming the audience. It can behelpful if participants have the chance to become familiar with the scenarios in advance.Explain how the results will be used. Ifparticipants are to be convinced of theimportance of their contribution, the aimof the scenario planning process needsto be well-defined and clear indications

need to be given as to how the resultswill feed into decision-making.

Getting the process rightMaximising the learning benefits of scenarioplanning exercises requires close attention toprocess. Careful planning and structuring ofthe scenario elaboration, synthesis andevaluation stages of scenario planning is

An exercise carried out by the ForesightCrime Prevention Panel provides anexample for a typical one-off scenarioplanning event. The aim of the panel wasto explore the crime potentials of newtechnologies and to ensure that thesepotentials were minimized through pre-ventive action. The 1998 ForesightFutures scenarios were used in a one-dayworkshop to structure thinking about thefuture of crime. Groups organised aroundeach of the four scenarios developedsectoral scenarios for the crime of thefuture. They identified new technologieslikely to be used by criminals, as well aspotential prevention strategies andnecessary responses. Results of theworkshop were fed into the panel’s consultation paper and report.

The RegIS study investigated thecombined effects of the UKCIP socio-economic scenarios (based on the sameframework as the Foresight Futuresscenarios) and the UKCIP98 climatescenarios, for two regions of the UK. Thiswas the first UK regional integratedassessment of the impacts of climatechange on agriculture, water, biodiversityand the coastal zone. In RegIS, two of theUKCIP socioeconomic scenarios werefurther developed with local decisionmakers from East Anglia and North WestEngland. This provided quantified indica-tors (for example, for agricultural cropprices) for the 2050s, for input into theRegIS sectoral models.

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needed. The details of the process should betailored to the needs and resources availablein each case.The process needs to:

allow for the integration of the differentviewpoints and technical expertise;be iterative, combining creative,participative workshops with work carriedout by individuals or small groups tosynthesise and elaborate scenarios;be realistic about the time and resourcesneeded to complete an exercise as thistends to be under-estimated; allow timefor analysis of the results;involve stakeholders.

The scenario elaboration workshop isperhaps the most critical stage. Key points toconsider are:

it takes time to familiarise participantswith future thinking; the initial workshopshould be at least a full day.a typical structure for the workshopmight be: aim of the process,introduction scenario approach,presentation of scenarios, elaboration ofsectoral scenarios (for example,transport in 2020) in break-out groups,feedback, planning next steps.moderation by a professional withscenario experience is recommended.We recommend that three principles areapplied in scenario elaboration andevaluation: symmetry, balance andtriangulation (comparison).

SymmetryEquivalent effort is devoted to theelaboration of all the scenarios chosen.

BalanceThe scenario storylines and indicators aredeveloped as neutrally and dispassionately

as possible – covering the same areas andseeking to avoid bias towards or against anyparticular scenario.

Triangulation (comparison)A process of ensuring that the distinctivenessand coherence of scenarios is retained (mainly by viewing the narrativesside-by-side).

Adapting the scenariosThe scenarios provide a generic frameworkbut they are in themselves not relevant tomany sectors or policy areas. The aim of theframework and these guidance notes is toprovide a means for scenarios to beelaborated for any given area of interest.This requires:

the identification of key drivers in the sector (for example, internationalmarkets, social preferences, regional planning);an assessment of the links betweendrivers and relevant sectoral trends;specialist knowledge of the sector.

The scenario framework is a flexible toolwhich should be adapted and altered to suitthe needs of a given study; it can bemodified and ‘played with’. They should notbe taken as an authoritative set ofprojections. The benefit of using a commonset of basic dimensions (values andgovernance) is that these have provenrobust in a number of different settings.However, these dimensions may not alwaysbe relevant, or there may be an interest intesting alternatives. New dimensions andnew scenario labels would then be the rightcourse to take.

Producing four scenario elaborationscan be time-consuming, with diminishingreturns. One alternative approach is to


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choose a smaller number of scenarios for in-depth analysis (say two or three).Some studies have chosen to look atdiametrically-opposed scenarios (worldmarkets and local stewardship, for instance).However, we recommend that the symmetrictwo-by-two matrix approach to scenarioelaboration is retained during a first phaseto avoid the risk of narrowing down thethinking too soon.

Effort devoted to the development ofindicators will vary between studies.Indicators may illustrate the storylines, orthey may be outputs of the scenarioplanning exercise that are used in furtheranalysis (planning, options appraisal orscientific modelling).

We recommend that scenarios are keptsimple to make them accessible and to testthem with non-specialist audiences. Inlonger or more intensive scenario planningexercises, users may want to introduceextreme events and feedback mechanisms.

There are several ways to adapt thescenarios:

Two scenarios can be combined, forexample one for the UK level, and onefor the international level. It is, ofcourse, essential to choose thecombination carefully. The choices madewill depend on what is realistic andrelevant for the study in question. Forexample, a scenario exercise on the UKmanufacturing industry could examinethe effects of an international WorldMarket scenario combined with aNational Enterprise scenario.Major shocks or extreme events are notpart of the scenario storylines presentedhere. They can, however, be introducedduring the planning process. Thisinvolves the identification of relevant‘side swipes’ (for example through a

brainstorming session), and asubsequent analysis of impacts undereach scenario.Another approach would be to introducea third dimension (driver of change)relevant to the sector: high or lowtechnology scenarios have been tried ina number of exercises including theSpecial Report on Emissions Scenarios(SRES) for the Intergovernmental Panelon Climate Change (IPCC), (which arebased on the same principal axes as theForesight scenarios)2. In this case theeffects of different assumptions about theadoption of energy technologies in thefuture was analysed in detail for one offour socio-economic scenarios.If the original set of scenarios is thoughtto over-simplify trends it is possible toadd a second round of scenarioelaboration encouraging participants tothink about feedback mechanisms. Thisallows learning processes to be takeninto account. One option would be toorganise this round of the evaluation asa ‘game-playing’ simulation.

Taking account of major shocksThe exploratory and synthetic approachused in these scenarios suggests thatchange occurs gradually along a singletrajectory. Future states are seen as theoutcome of an accumulation of changesover time, all pointing in the same direction.But not all change is like this. The directionof change may itself vary over time, withone set of conditions being replaced by anew set. This change in direction may takeplace slowly (as part of the process ofeconomic and social development), or itmay happen suddenly as a result of major,surprise external events (such as terroristattacks, or rapid changes in the naturalenvironment). If the change is slow it may be

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possible for one scenario to be supersededby another (a shift from World Markets toGlobal Responsibility, for instance). If thechange is sudden, the question to be askedis how resilient is a given scenario to itsimpact? Answering this question will be verydifficult, mainly because large-scale,unanticipated events are hard to foresee.We suggest that governments and otherorganisations build up inventories of ‘shock’events, by scanning conventional andunconventional sources, and throughbrainstorming. The question of resiliencecould then be investigated by applying theshock to each of the scenarios and trying toassess how easily each of them couldrecover or adapt to their impacts.

Taking scenario planning furtherWe believe that scenario planning is oneexample of a broader set of tools thattoday’s business and public sectororganisations need to apply moreconsistently. Economic and politicalconditions change rapidly, and foresightenables organisations to think about earlywarning signs for identified trends, plan forpossible responses by the organisation, anddevelop ways of increasing their capacity toadapt. Periodic scenario planning exercisescan be helpful, but beyond this theorganisation may also seek to embedfutures ‘routines’ within many businessprocesses. Generating greater awarenessabout future trends throughout theorganisation is a condition of organisationalchange, and is likely to lead to a more agileand responsive business.

References1. Department of the environment transport and

the regions, 1999. Quality of Life counts – indicators for a strategy for sustainable development for the United Kingdom: a baseline assessment. London.

2. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(2000). IPCC Special Report – emissionsscenarios. A Special Report of IPCC WorkingGroup III.

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AAccountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 72, 85, 87Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 5-6, 20, 32, 51-52, 63, 69, 83, 89Adapting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 24, 55, 90African National Congress . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 47Agenda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34, 57, 61, 72, 74-75Agriculture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 80, 82, 85, 89AIDS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39, 58Alternative futures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 19-20, 28, 77Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, ix-x, 2, 7, 9-12, 15-17, 20-24, 26-29, 64, 68-69, 83, 88, 90-91Analysis of National Development Policies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29ANC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 47, 49-50Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 22, 51Artificial Intelligence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, 19, 77-79, 89-90, 92

BBackcasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, x, 12, 15, 23-24, 28-29Balance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 17, 53, 62, 71, 80, 83, 90Biotechnology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85British Crime Survey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

CCabinet Office . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, vii, x, 6, 16, 22, 28, 53-56, 69, 71, 74, 76Cabinet Office Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28Cabinet Office Trends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 16Capital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 39-44, 46, 85Causal Layered Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, 12, 28Centralisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72Change . . . . . . . . v, x, 2, 4, 6-8, 15, 22-23, 28, 37-39, 42, 44-45, 47, 50-51, 55, 59, 71-74, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77-80, 82-89, 91-92

CLA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, 28Climate change. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, x, 4, 6, 8, 38, 42, 77-79, 82, 89, 91-92Climatic Research Unit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 52, 57-58, 62, 71-72, 85Conflict . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 47, 51-52, 85-88Consistency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65, 68-69, 80, 89Creative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 1, 10-11, 19, 50-51, 57, 59, 64, 74, 88-90Crime. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 55, 64, 75, 89Criticisms. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 26-27, 69

D

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Index Strategic Futures Planning

Decision-making . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1-2, 10, 16, 27, 31-32, 57, 59, 79, 81, 84, 86, 89Decline. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 40, 42-43, 45, 54-56, 66, 85-86Defining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 24, 28, 80DEFRA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x, 77Demography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 66, 82Development. . . . . v, vii, ix, 3, 13, 20, 29, 37, 39-40, 42, 58-59, 62, 64, 72-73, 77-88, 91-92Digital . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53-54, 59-60Downsizing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Drivers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 9-10, 19, 27, 54, 68-69, 73-74, 80, 84-88, 90DTI. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 79

EEC Scenarios Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 63-69Econometrics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Economic . . . . . . . . 2-4, 7, 9, 15-16, 21, 26, 28-29, 38, 40, 42-43, 47, 49-50, 53-54, 60-62, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64-66, 68, 75, 77-88, 91-92

Economics of climate change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 8Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 41, 47, 53, 58, 61-62, 64, 71, 75, 84, 86-87Emissions scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 91-92Employment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 56, 60, 66, 74, 84EMU. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Engaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 10, 59, 86, 89Environment . . . . . vii, 9, 20-21, 32, 34, 37, 39, 45-46, 53, 55, 57, 60-61, 65, 69, 72, 74-75, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77-78, 80, 82, 84-85, 91-92

Equal Opportunities Committee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59European . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, x, 10, 54, 63-64, 66, 68, 72, 80-81, 85European Commission. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, x, 10, 63-64, 68European Union . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72, 81, 85Executive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, ix-x, 16, 61Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 28, 31, 34, 38, 59, 77-78, 82, 88-90Exploratory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 23, 26, 31, 79, 86, 91Exponential . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 39-40, 46

FFactors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 6-7, 9, 19-21, 42, 48, 53-55, 64-65, 67, 69, 78, 83Failure of EMU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25-26, 39, 90-91Financial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 60-61, 72, 85, 88Five Minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Flamingos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 47-49, 51Flight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 24, 47, 49, 51Flooding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78Food . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, 5, 40, 42-46, 77, 88Forecasting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 7, 22-23, 26, 28, 31-32, 78, 86

Strategic Futures Planning Index

95

Forecasts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20-23, 31-32, 80Foresight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, vii, ix-x, 11-13, 17, 23, 31, 34, 47, 63, 73, 77, 79, 83-92Forward Studies Unit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, x, 64-65, 68-69Futures Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, vii, ix-x, 25, 57-62Futures Research Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 28-29Futures Toolkit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, 71-76Futureswork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, 71FW de Klerk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 49

GGeneric scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Global. . . . . . . . iv, ix, 2-4, 6, 38-39, 42, 45-46, 54, 58, 64-66, 68-69, 72, 77, 80-85, 87, 91Global Business Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix, 3, 64Global environment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45, 77Global responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85, 87, 91Globalisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66, 74, 78, 81Governance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 65, 68-69, 72-75, 78-82, 84-88, 90Governments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 63, 66, 71, 81, 92Groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x, 6, 25-26, 34, 47-48, 52, 59, 63, 65, 69, 72, 75, 89-90Guidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71, 73, 75, 77-78, 80, 82-83, 87, 90

HHarvard Business School . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Health . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix, 4, 6, 41-42, 54, 60, 75, 84-86HIV. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58HM Treasury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8House of Commons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 5, 8House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8Housing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 41, 47, 54, 59Humanity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 37-38, 45

IIcarus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 7, 47-50Identification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11, 28, 90-91Identify. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8-9, 19, 21-22, 51, 83, 89Immigration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85Impact . . . . . . . . v, 3-4, 19, 21-22, 26, 33, 46-47, 49, 55, 59, 62, 65, 67, 74, 77-80, 82, 92Inclusive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 33, 47, 50, 52, 86Indicators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 79-80, 82, 84, 88-92Individual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 54-56, 66, 69, 75, 81Industrial . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 37, 39, 42-46, 63, 66Industry. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 42, 77, 91Inequality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 66, 74, 86Information . . . . . . . iii, ix-x, 11, 15-17, 20, 22, 25, 34, 53, 55, 57, 60, 63, 69, 72-75, 85, 87

96


Innovation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15, 17, 53, 57-58, 61-63, 85-88Inputs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11-12, 19, 78, 82Integrated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 26, 65, 82, 84, 89Intergovernmental Panel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 91-92International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, vii, 2, 8-9, 13, 29, 37, 57-58, 64, 66, 81, 85, 90-91International Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, 13, 29International Futures Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Internet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53-55, 59Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 22, 28IPCC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77, 79, 91-92Issues . . . . . . . ix-x, 4-6, 9-11, 17, 19-21, 25-29, 37, 51-52, 58-59, 62, 71-74, 76, 82, 84, 87IT . . . . ix, 1-12, 15-16, 19-28, 31-34, 37-40, 42, 44-45, 47-48, 50-61, 63-65, 68-69, 71-75, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77-80, 83-84, 86-91

KKnowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 11, 20, 26, 28, 55, 57, 62, 79, 82-83, 88, 90

LLame duck. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 47-50Land . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39-40, 42-43, 45, 78, 82, 88Learn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7, 32, 46, 57-58LGA Futures Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, 71-76Lloyds TSB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62Local government . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, x, 21, 71-76Local Government Act . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74Local Government Association . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, x, 71, 76Local Stewardship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81, 84-85, 88, 91Logic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48, 50, 89London Stock Exchange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

MMacroeconomic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Maintenance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86Managers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix, 2, 10, 20, 32-33, 56Manufacturing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 85, 87-88, 91Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, 11, 16, 57Markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 63, 75, 81, 84-85, 90-91Media . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 38, 63-64, 85Members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6-7, 22, 33, 48, 50, 57, 71-73Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, vii, 8, 28-29, 47, 64-65, 69, 79Methods . . . . . . . . . . iii, ix-x, 1, 8, 10-12, 15-17, 19, 22, 25-27, 32-33, 59, 64-65, 74-75, 88Microsoft. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Modelling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15-16, 80-81, 88, 91Models . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 10, 15-16, 21, 24, 26, 74, 89


97

Mont Fleur Scenario Process. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47, 51Multimedia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 53

NNanotechnology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85National . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4-5, 29, 47-49, 53, 56, 63-64, 72, 77, 80-81, 83-86, 91National enterprise . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81, 84, 86, 91Natural resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 42, 44, 74, 77Negotiation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48-49, 51-52, 56Nelson Mandela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 47NGOs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53, 64, 66Nonrenewable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 40-41, 43, 45Normative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16, 20, 22-23, 26, 28Normative forecasting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22-23, 28

OObjectives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii-iv, 15-16, 22, 24, 31, 33, 85Open-minded . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52Oracle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25Organisation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 5-7, 9-10, 15-16, 20, 22-24, 27, 32-34, 61, 63, 66, 86, 92Ostrich . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 47-49Outputs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11-12, 31, 91Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, 8, 27-29, 53, 83

PParliament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix, 3, 5, 8, 57-59Participative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85, 88, 90Passive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21, 28, 31, 37-38, 51, 53, 60, 72, 80, 82-83, 87People . . 1, 5, 7, 9-10, 22-26, 29, 31, 33, 39-47, 50-51, 54-55, 58-64, 71-72, 79, 83-85, 88Personal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22, 28, 56, 61, 81, 84-86Physical. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 23-24, 41, 46, 55, 64, 78Planning . . . . . . . . i, iii-v, ix-xi, 1-8, 10-13, 15-17, 19-29, 31-34, 38-46, 48-52, 54-62, 64-69, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71-76, 78-92Policy . . . . . . . . iv, vii, ix, 2, 4-8, 15, 19, 23-24, 27, 32, 37, 44, 47, 49, 54, 57-59, 61-62, 71, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74, 76-78, 80-81, 83-88, 90

Pollution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5, 39, 42-45Poor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38-39, 72, 86Population . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2, 5-6, 37, 39-46, 53, 59-61, 66, 78-79, 82Positioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 7, 33-34Positive ageing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 57, 59Power . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 4, 23, 27-28, 37, 47, 52, 59, 66, 81, 84Private . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3, 22, 54-55, 63, 75, 78-79, 81, 86Production . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 39-42, 44-45, 65, 68, 73, 88

98


Programme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, vii, x, 26, 57-58, 62, 69, 72, 77-83Public . . . . . . . . . i, iii-iv, ix-x, 1, 3-4, 8-9, 22, 47, 49, 51-53, 57-59, 61-64, 66, 72-73, 78-79, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85-86, 92Public policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 57-58, 61-62, 78, 85Publication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37, 65, 68-69, 75, 83

QQualitative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 16-17, 20-22, 79, 82Quantitative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10, 16-17, 21-22, 28, 82, 88

RRAPID . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, 47, 53, 85, 91Rationale . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix, 5-7Regional Assemblies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71, 75Regions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 66, 77, 80, 89, 92Relevance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29, 77, 79-80Renaissance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63, 66, 73Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, 2, 8, 25, 28-29, 38, 53, 73, 77, 80, 82-83, 87-88Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 24, 37, 40-43, 45, 87Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, ix, 2, 9, 16, 23, 33, 37, 39-46, 71, 73-75, 77, 81, 84, 87, 89-90Retailing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54, 86, 88Reviewing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24, 73Roadmaps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, 15, 27RSA Commission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62

SScarcity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 40Scenario. . . . . . iii-iv, ix-xi, 1-4, 7, 19-20, 28, 33, 42-45, 47, 49-52, 59, 63-65, 68-69, 73, 75, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79-81, 83-84, 86, 88-92

Scenario planning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, x-xi, 1-2, 7, 19-20, 51, 80, 86, 88-89, 91-92Scenarios, Europe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 63-69Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, x, 2, 15, 17, 53, 77, 83Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, ix, 1, 8-9, 11, 23-24, 65, 85Scottish Parliament . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix, 5, 57-58Selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26-27, 65, 67-68, 82Shell International . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, 2, 8Significant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20, 22-23, 32, 54, 66, 74Simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 15, 21, 24, 49-50, 88, 91Simulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, 10, 16, 24-25, 29, 37, 91Slow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6, 10, 46-47, 91SMEs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66Socio-economic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v, 54, 77-82, 87, 89, 91Sovereignty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81Stakeholder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28, 33, 52, 63, 79


99

Storylines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79, 81-82, 84, 90-91Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 3, 5, 8, 11-12, 15, 25, 57, 73-76, 88, 92Sustainable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 5-6, 37, 40-41, 43-47, 49, 72, 85, 88, 92Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12, 21, 31, 34, 38-39, 57, 78, 81, 84, 87-88

TTeams. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78, 82Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, x, 1, 42-43, 53, 55, 59, 66, 72, 74, 77-79, 83, 91Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 24, 42, 44, 51, 57, 69, 83, 86, 91Thinking . . . . . . iii, ix-x, 1-3, 5-8, 10-13, 16, 20, 24, 28-29, 32-33, 37, 49, 51, 57-59, 61-62, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71, 83, 87-91

Third World. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix-x, 1, 10-12, 15, 21, 26-28, 57, 83-84, 89, 92Tourism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80, 82, 86, 88Traditional. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42, 56-57, 63-64, 71, 86-87Transport . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9, 55-56, 72, 77, 90, 92Treasury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8, 80Trend . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, x, 6, 10-11, 15-16, 19, 21-22, 27, 38, 53-54, 63-65

UUK. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv-v, vii, ix-x, 2, 5-6, 8-9, 13, 15, 17, 26, 34, 53-56, 73, 75-84, 89, 91Under-investment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Unemployment. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85-88Union. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56, 63, 72, 81, 85United Nations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii, 40, 58Users . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19, 31, 54, 63, 66, 75, 80, 84, 87, 91

VValues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26, 50, 53, 63, 66, 74, 79-82, 84-88, 90Visioning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii, 10, 12, 15-16, 22-23, 28, 57, 74-75, 78-79

WWeak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4, 49, 66, 85-86World markets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84-85, 91World War II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1, 22WORLD3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv, 3, 37-39, 42, 44Writing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65, 68-69

YYoung Foundation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57

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