Skip to Main Content

Strategic Business Insights (SBI) logo

Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is SBI's tool of choice for developing corporate and other high-level strategies. Why scenario planning? Because the future is inherently uncertain! In the face of an uncertain future, the best one can do is:

  1. Consider a wide range of possible developments.
  2. Consider many strategic alternatives.
  3. Decide on a course of action.
  4. Monitor actual developments.
  5. Make the inevitable strategic adjustments sooner rather than later.

SBI's approach to scenario planning covers items 1, 2, and 3 above. Our roadmapping service sets the stage for items 4 and 5.

SBI's Approach

SBI began developing its scenario planning more than 25 years ago and remains a leader in helping clients apply the approach to their businesses. Our multidisciplinary consulting team works with clients to identify and focus critical strategic issues, create relevant scenarios that capture the important uncertainties in the external environment, and then develop the best strategy on the basis of an evaluation of competing alternatives.

Client engagements ideally follow the illustration below. Creating scenarios is a disciplined process that surfaces critical dynamics in the external environment that are highly uncertain and may have a significant impact on the outcome of strategic decisions. The result is a set of several entirely disparate scenarios that describe how the future will unfold and what important events will take place. Once constructed, scenarios are best used for developing strategy by identifying, testing, and modifying various alternatives in order to select the best strategy to carry forward.

Creating Scenarios and Developing Strategy