Business Planning in Turbulent Times New Methods for Applying Scenarios

About this book

This book is for business and organizational leaders who feel the ever-increasing turbulence of the environment and are interested in thinking through how to deal with related complexity and uncertainty.

The authors explain in clear language how future orientation, and specifically modern scenario techniques, help to address increasing risk and lead to more confident and robust decisions. They draw on examples from a wide variety of settings and circumstances including the large corporations, inter-governmental organizations like the World Bank, small firms, municipalities and other communities.Readers will be inspired to try out scenario approaches themselves to address the turbulence that affects them and others with whom they work, live and do business.

A key feature of the book is the exchange of insights across the academic - practitioner divide. What has previously remained jargon only accessible to the highest level of corporate and government futures planners here becomes comprehensible to a wider business and practitioner community.

This book unlocks the high-powered secrets of scenario planning techniques - until now the reserve of large corporate players, governments and militaries - for a wide audience of business and organizational leaders. It presents powerful tools for all businesses or organizations in today's increasingly risky, complex and turbulent environments.

Contents

Introduction; Intellectual History; Scenario Planning and the Search for Coincidences and Differences; Reflecting on Scenario Practice; New Forms of Coherence; Turbulence in the Indian Agricultural Sector; Swarm Planning: A New Design Paradigm Dealing with Long Term Problems like Climate Change; Designing More Effective Political Governance of Turbulent Fields; To What Extent do Venezuela's Causal Textures Allow Scenarios to Work Towards Social Dialogue?; The Disruptive Aspect of Turbulence; Scenarios Providing Clarity to Address Turbulence; From Causal Textures to Predetermined Elements to New Realities in Scenario Thinking and Practice; Conceptions of Fairness and the Forming of the Common Ground; Turbulence and Corporate Social Responsibility; Conclusion.

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Biography

Rafael Ramirez is Professor of Management, HEC-Paris, Fellow in Strategic Management at Templeton College and Said Business School, University of Oxford, and was visiting Professor of Scenarios and Corporate Strategy at Shell International from 2000 to 2003. John W. Selsky is Division Director and Associate Professor of Management, College of Business, University of South Florida, Lakeland. Kees van der Heijden is Associate Fellow of Templeton College, University of Oxford, Professor Emeritus at Strathclyde Business School, was previously Head of Scenario Planning, Shell International, and is the author of the bestselling book Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation.