Strategy Scenarios and Deployment

The Way Forward

Your strategy is your plan for the future, i.e. how you should meet your future vision and mission, broken down into targets and goals.

Fundamental for a business, or any organization public or private, is that the strategy need to be robust, no matter how the future develop, and opportunities and restraints unfolds.

There are a lot of different factors affecting the future. Some are relatively likely, but some are not. Some factors and interact and change the playing field while others may not affect your company, but your customers, and your customers customer. Do you have the overview?

A scenario is based on both what you know, as well as what you are not so sure about, considering the future. Performing a systematic analysis of the business environment including intelligence from other experts will make the results reliable. Depending on just a few general trends scenarios can be developed covering a wide range of a likely future by discovering how some chosen factors develop in different future settings.

SAM has extensive experience in developing both strategies and scenarios, utilizing a method originally developed by the Shell corporation in the early 1970-ies

The method, and the success thereof, include an extensive foresight in topics that will affect the strategy of the business or organization. The foresight is done in several steps exploring which basic factors and trends affects the future outcome. The factors are put into four different future settings and thereby forming the scenario content.

Successfully and profoundly done the scenarios will ensure a robust strategy that will cover and manage the widest range of possible future settings. The scenario process will also reveal important indicators and milestones that are important to watch out for.

”In times of rapid change, a crisis of perception (that is, the inability to see an emerging novel reality by being locked inside obsolete assumptions) often causes strategic failure, particularly in large, well-run companies. Opportunities missed because managers did not recognize them in time are clearly more important than failures, which are visible to all.”
Pierre Wack
Former director of Royal Dutch/Shell’s strategic planning office

During 2018 and 2019, SAM worked together with KTH EECS, Stockholm University and RISE to build a set of scenarios for the year 2030. Read more about the Key Factors and Scenario Parameters on the 2030 Scenario Summery page or dive right into the scenario stories below.

High economic momentum but political and societal movements are protectionist and secluding.

#tiger2030

High economic momentum but openness and multiculturalism prevail in political and societal movements.

#dolphin2030

The economic momentum is low and political as well as societal movements are protectionist and secluding.

#koala2030

Openness and multiculturalism still rain supreme in political and societal movements, but the economic momentum is low.

#elephant2030