Evolution of Scenario Planning

"""This book is a good exemplar of what Donald Schön aptly called 'reflection on practice'. Based on well-documented and carefully analysed scenario planning interventions in which the author played critical roles, the book assesses how the 'strategic conversation' of scenario planning frame introduced by Kees van der Heijden worked for those which the scenario planning sought to serve. In doing so, the book enriches the 'strategic conversation' part of the scenario planning literature"". Prof Rafael Ramirez, Director of the Oxford Scenarios Programme and Professor of Practice, University of Oxford (UK) ""If the future, as the poet Rilke says, is 'time's excuse to frighten us', then foresight is the gift that lets us come to terms with this anxiety. Scenario planning is perhaps the most rigorous technique of producing foresight, and Burt takes it to task. Offering a history, a philosophical re-grounding, and a 'how to' guide, this book revisits and critically frames scenario planners' prime assumptions, setting these against the inherent openness of the future. Drawing on a wide range of sources, and illustrating these through many first-hand examples, Burt not only shows the limits of plans and the folly of mistaking concreteness for control, he also nudges the debate towards a subtler and more reticent orientation towards the future. This book is a thought-provoking invitation for those studying scenarios and those developing them in organisational contexts to stay alive to the contingencies and mysteries of the future which may be gleaned when one opens up to the interstices between certainties and structures."" Prof Mike Zundel, Professor of Organization Studies, Strategy, IB and Entrepreneurship, University of Liverpool (UK)"