p.1 Scenarios... Their purpose is not to predict or forecast the future
but rather to imagine what can happen next. They are created to influence the course of
events
p.1 Scenarios are representations of different future states that can be used (1) to help businesses generate
options about what to do next and (2) to assist them in testing these options. Given different future states, what
might businesses do? And to what extent will these actions succeed? These two questions are the ones that scenarios can help
a business, or for that matter the people in any organization, answer.
p.5 Foresight is the art of anticipating what might happen next and attempting
to do something about it. This anticipation should... result in... efforts to move the future in directions that
bring benefit to an organization and society.
p.5-6 scenarios can play two critical roles in organizations:
- Scenarios can play a role in generating strategies. Alternative futures can be imagined
and their impact on industry structure... can be analyzed. Distinct opportunities and threats then can be identified and strategies
formulated to take advantage of the opportunities and deal with the threats...
- Scenarios also can play a role in testing these strategies... they can be tested for their
relative effectiveness.
p.66 Because there are a range of possible outcomes in the future, a business cannot without taking
on great risk bet that the future will evolve in a single direction... People in business, therefore, need a range
of possibilities in order to appropriately plan for their future investments. They need multiple stories of the future...
The point of creating different scenarios is to show that different possible futures can emerge... The whole purpose of building
scenarios is to imagine that the future will be different than the present... Constructing future stories is a way to describe
an emerging reality.
p.67 The reason for examining the future is to create a more beneficial one for an organization and its
stakeholders.
p.144 Sustainable development... is the highest priority for developing countries.
p.240 Much of our cultural decay, Abby tells us, has come about precisely because we have become so detached
from the wilds. We have become like so many domesticated animals: fat, slow, stupid, and utterly unable to look after ourselves
back cover Strategic Foresight... holds that decision makers should imagine multiple possibilities
and that predicting the future is less useful than shaping better futures.
