Strategic Dreamers

Module VI: Scenario Planning

Our Methodological Inspirations

Our approach to scenario building draws significant inspiration from two complementary schools of thought: the Oxford Scenario Planning Approach (OSPA) and the Manoa method developed by Wendy Schultz. Rather than mechanically combining these methods, we treat them as guiding frameworks that inform our practice and shape how we think about futures work.

What scenarios are and why they matter

Scenarios are not predictions, projections, or forecasts.¹ As Rafael Ramírez emphasizes, scenarios are “structured fictions”—plausible, purposeful accounts of possible future contexts.² They are designed to be useful, not truthful; they prioritize plausibility over probability.³ Their value lies not in correctly anticipating what will happen, but in helping organizations and communities reframe their understanding of the present and expand their capacity to perceive emerging possibilities.

Scenarios serve as “reframing supports”—safe conceptual spaces where multiple perspectives can surface, assumptions can be challenged, and new strategic options can emerge.⁴ They are always developed for someone, for a purpose, and with a specified use.⁵ This user-centered orientation helps avoid the trap of generic trend extrapolation disconnected from strategic action.

What can you do with scenarios? They enable stress-testing of strategies and policies across multiple possible futures, identification of robust options that perform well regardless of which future unfolds, early warning of emerging challenges and opportunities, and organizational learning that builds adaptive capacity.⁶ They also serve as powerful springboards for innovation design—by immersing teams in richly imagined future worlds, scenarios reveal unmet needs, emerging market spaces, and transformation opportunities that remain invisible when attention stays fixed on the present.

The Oxford Scenario Planning Approach: key inspirations

From OSPA, we draw several foundational principles:

The approach is explicitly learner-centered rather than decision-making centered—the goal is expanding perception and reframing understanding, not narrowly optimizing choices.⁷ Scenarios describe what might happen to the context in which an organization operates, distinct from the options available to the organization and the strategy it chooses to pursue.⁸

OSPA is explicitly designed for what Ramírez calls “TUNA situations”—conditions characterized by Turbulence, Uncertainty, Novelty, and Ambiguity.⁹ In such environments, traditional forecasting fails; scenarios become essential tools for navigating radical uncertainty.

The methodology emphasizes moving from the outer contextual environment (macro factors like geopolitics, technology, demographics) through the transactional environment (stakeholders, competitors, regulators) to the organization itself—a structured inquiry, drawing on the work of Kees van der Heijden, that keeps context at the center.¹⁰

The Manoa method

From Wendy Schultz’s Manoa method, we draw a different but equally valuable set of principles.

The Manoa approach emerged from a specific challenge: helping stakeholders understand the “so what?” of horizon scanning and emerging issues research.¹¹ Its design criteria specified that scenario processes should be participatory, firmly based in data, map steps by which change diverges from the present, include multiple drivers of change, and depict surprising outcomes across a generational time horizon.¹²

Central to Manoa is the principle that “the future is not binary”—our explorations deserve more than two axes.¹³ The method triangulates on initial difference to maximize resulting difference: each scenario begins with at least three emerging issues from different STEEP categories (Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, Political), stated as mature conditions 20–30 years out.¹⁴ The greater the orthogonality in starting points, the greater the creativity generated through what Schultz calls “bisociation.”¹⁵

The method works through impact cascades. Participants explore each emerging issue by brainstorming primary impacts, then secondary impacts of those primaries, then tertiary impacts—creating futures wheels that trace chains of consequences.¹⁶ Because each scenario contains sets of impact cascades, it builds an inbuilt narrative of change over time, with tensions, conflicts, and sudden opportunities emerging at points where impacts intersect and collide.¹⁷

Schultz recommends probing for completeness across multiple domains of human experience: family structure, community, economy, governance, work, arts and leisure, vices and crimes, ecology, media and communication, transportation, education, subcultures, religion and myths, and core values and worldviews.¹⁸ In subsequent developments of the method, the addition of the Verge General Practice Framework helped ensure scenarios achieve what Schultz calls “integral depth.”¹⁹

The method asks practitioners to characterize scenarios through evocative devices—headlines that capture the tenor of the times, bumper-sticker phrases that capture essence, film or documentary titles.²⁰ This supports the development of vivid “day in the life” narratives that make future worlds experiential and memorable.²¹

Critically, Manoa follows Dator’s Second Law of Futures Thinking: “the only useful ideas about the future should appear to be ridiculous.”²² The method serves as an engine of creativity, drawing on processes identified by Edward de Bono: exaggerating impacts to absurdity, challenging assumptions about present conditions continuing, combining changes in ways that distort the familiar, and reversing current constraints or opportunities.²³

Why these inspirations work well together

OSPA provides conceptual discipline: the distinction between scenarios, options, and strategy; the emphasis on plausibility over probability; the structured movement from contextual to transactional environments; the learner-centered orientation that keeps scenarios connected to genuine reframing.

Manoa provides creative methodology: the triangulation on difference through multiple orthogonal changes; the impact cascade logic that generates inbuilt narratives; the insistence on imaginative stretch and assumption challenge; the attention to cultural texture and lived experience.

Drawing on both traditions, our scenario work aims to produce futures that are analytically grounded in emerging change while remaining experiential and culturally intelligible—scenarios that challenge assumptions while remaining connected to strategic action.

Outcome: scenarios that are simultaneously “for decisions” and “for imagination”—analytically grounded in driver logic and emerging change, culturally credible through narrative depth and lived-world texture, and practically usable for stress-testing strategies, designing innovations, and building organizational capacity to navigate uncertainty.