Scenario Planning - Review

Whole Earth, Spring, 1999 by Art Kleiner

SCENARIO PLANNING Managing for the Future

Gill Ringland. 1998; 407 pp. 39.95. John Wiley and Sons.

A confidence-building encyclopedia of scenario projects done to date, in the US, Europe, and South Africa. Ordinarily, there's nothing so tedious as reading about someone else's scenarios, and the casual reader must invest a fair amount of reading between the lines to get value from this book. But Ms. Ringland's descriptions are cheerfully engaging, and they show how a variety of corporations and nonprofit organizations have used the method. I particularly appreciated the overview of the economists' scenarios on the future of European Monetary Union, which arguably helped influence the rapid acceptance of the Euro, and Shell's 1996 scenarios, in which the company's planners admit that, even in a global boom and oil glut, demand for oil will peak as energy technologies come on line.

"Companies that have used scenario thinking claim results including:

* at the insurance company Erste Allgmeine Versicherung, to spot the results of political changes, e.g., the Berlin Wall coming down and so establish themselves early in former Eastern European countries;

* at Electrolux, the consumer goods company, to see the opportunity for new business, e.g., a service based on re-using consumer products;

* at wiring and cable supplier KRONE, to develop 200 new product ideas;

* at Pacific Gas and Electric, to dispel assumptions about the "Official Future" and cause it to work to reduce energy consumption;

* in the UK National Health Service, to provide a way for a very dispersed, large and disparate organization to think through new relationships, internally and to customers.