What if the future scenario changes?

Session 9

Part 1
Scenario planning

The class commenced with us discussing scenario planning. How would one make future plans?........

Interesting, I thought a person with a logical bent of mind should identify past trends and plan the future accordingly. The other two ideas that my class mates thought to be interesting were following a plan of action and hoping that it would be successful as well as applying plans to realities to see its outcome. Fair enough I was introduced to the idea of scenario planning and strategic management.

Von Neumann…….heard of him?ah…… yeah the guy who was the pioneer of computer architecture. And what does he have to do with scenario planning? Strange as it may seem, he had a lot to do with it and influenced its ideas in a variety of ways. We discuss history, von Neumann and his team in Mexico(if I recall correctly) who were working during the war in Europe and implementing methods that would serve as precedence for the future.

So what do we conclude, strategy and structure are intertwined? One cannot do without the other and they go hand in hand. But all said and done, what is a strategy? a simple question with a million perspectives, depending on what intelligence you use, scientific intelligence, marketing intelligence, competitive intelligence all reflect on their relevant strategies in different ways. Competitive intelligence is all about looking for traces. But if we are to talk about it in generic terms its your ability to plan for the future. A contingency plan is essential as well because unforeseen circumstances may arise as well.

How do you plan? How do you decide? You have a set of task related factors which comprise the decision space. So having analyzed all these factors our class discussion moves to a point where we discuss an interesting new technology the wi-fi 802 and the presence of hotspots in Singapore. Now what would scenario planning with respect to this involve and what could be its closest competitor. The most interesting idea was that of providing unsecured wireless networks all over Singapore which would allow free access to people without building new infrastructure or providing more hotspots. However certain remote forces in this area again could be the development of new technologies.

We discussed an example of the telecommunications scenario in the 21st century, where 3 variables namely munificent resources, diffusion of knowledge and harmonious governance controlled the scenario description. The Delphi technique where in experts are asked their point of views and then the divergence is discussed was introduced to us. Maybe we were left to emulate the Delphi technique with a short assignment when we were asked the to figure out the structural variables in a case when a Pacificnet was to provide free service to its customers and generate revenue from other sources. Interesting points like how technologically savvy a person is were brought up besides the availability of resources etc.

Here our class was interrupted and we were moved to another room. End of scenario planning……………..

But to sum up, I think its an interesting idea and very relevant with respect to the dynamism of the markets today where we need to be prepared for unpredictable circumstances and need to broaden the horizons of our intelligence. Planning for the future and developing strategies in scenario planning is the way to stay one up on catastrophies…(a little emphatic but it conveys my idea.