Scenario Planning: A Field Guide to the Future

I have two bookshelves full of foresight books, and this is one of the best. Woody has created a scenario planning process that is easy to understand, simple to implement, and, most importantly, useful! I highly recommend his book.

There must be dozens of books on scenario planning on the market. Before discovering this one, I had bought and read (or tried to read) 5 or 6 of these books, and found them uniformly dry, academic, heavy-going... boring. Wade's book is different. It is easily the most readable of the ones I have dipped into, and it is also, without a doubt, the one with the best design, which makes the book a pleasure to read as well as facilitating your ability to understand how scenario planning works.However, in my view its ultimate value is its clarity. First, its step-by-step description of how to implement a scenario planning process is very helpful and would give beginners enough confidence to try it. Second, it provides clear and convincing argumentation for WHY an organisation should think in terms of scenarios. If you are the head of a company and read Wade's reasoning for introducing this way of thinking/planning into your firm, you would be hard-pressed to find any decent arguments for ignoring the technique and simply pressing ahead with the forecasts that you believe (or hope?) will turn out to be right. Scenario planning is about visualising the future so you are not taken by surprise when things turn out the way they do. After reading Wade's book, you will surely realise that by NOT introducing scenario thinking into your company, you are practically condemning it to exactly that fate: being taken by surprise.So if you are responsible for your organisation's long-term viability, this is the best overview and "how-to" primer out there. Start here... it is a quick and even light-hearted read... and then you can "graduate" to the boring academic tomes if you are so inclined.

I'm an avid reader, buying around 10-12 books every month from Amazon. I tend to be guided by the reviews and find them very, very helpful. I dare not accuse anyone of anything that I personally cannot validate however, it's a rare book indeed that gets 100% 5 star ratings. That being said, this is the very first book that I've ever reviewed but I felt it was necessary to "warn" potential buyers.This book has very little content, most of which is rather vague. Followed by several case studies that comprise about 30% of the book.The layout of the book makes it almost unreadable. The author chose to use a paperback format with a landscape layout. I always underline pertinent parts of what I read for future reference. The layout chosen makes this almost impossible. The font is way too small, by normal standards, and the inclusion of dark colored background pages, reminiscent of many children's books further adds to the difficulty of wading through the content. A great topic that needs to be further explored but this isn't the book to choose.

It's not often that a book can truly help you prepare for the future given that everyone's situation is different. Yet that's just what SCENARIO PLANNING does. In very simple and understandable terms, it can help you learn what it takes to analyze your present situation, examine the factors that can affect you in the future and determine a multitude of possible real world paths you will ultimately end up heading down. This book is a must for those who want to stay ahead of the curve and not be part of the lemming crowd that simply waits for their fate to happen. Those who use and learn the lessons of this book will be the ones that succeed in the future, leaving the rest of us to react to changes we did not expect. Wade also adds sections to the book called Web 9.0 and 11 Changes that get you think about what the next 10 years may bring, which alone were worth the price of the book.

This new (and visually striking) book fills a big gap in the marketplace -- in fact, it's now the must-read primer for anyone interested in scenario planning. Until now, books on this subject were either very dry and academic, or fluffy "futurist" works. Where, I wondered, was the basic (but comprehensive) introduction and "how to" guide to the field? Well, I'm delighted to say this author has filled the gap with a lushly illustrated work that uses visuals explain the "how and why" of scenarios, and how to apply them for a wide variety of business, government, and non-profit purposes. Nicely weaved into the book are the author's own views on eleven key trends shaping the future. Bravo! Maybe we can all see the future a bit more clearly now...

This is a great book; clear, intelligent and practical. I chose this book for an upper level Strategic Planning course. Students made great use of the material. I looked at a number of options for a text covering the scenario planning part of the course. No other book came close.What is particularly helpful is the combination of conceptual, design and practical thought shown in the book's development. Scenario planning is often presented in ways that are either impenetrable or trivial. Theory and practice are well integrated here and there is nothing misplaced in that integration.I recommend this book without hesitation.

I liked the book since it offers very concise and visual cases from different futurist groups in the world. It is very helpful for college students just getting familiar with the topic.

This is a must read if you want to learn something "out of the box". In the book you'll find the following chapters: introduction ( Albert Einstein may have been a great scientist, but if he'd been a businessman he'd have lost his job); escaping the tyranny of the present; how to (how the process works start to finish); case studies; black swans ; are you ready . ( questions about what could happen); thinking the unthinkable. Buy it.

This book approaches Scenario Planning in a relaxed manner and explainshow simple and useful the process can be made to be. The Writer uses manypractical examples and at no stage does one feel lost either in translationor jargon. The narrative includes a decent framework and relevant anecdotes.While I never felt that I read anything that wasn't common sense, revolutionaryor new - I did feel that this was the books strength. The Writer shows us thatby telling sensible stories we can help prepare ourselves for the future.He does have the ability to simplify the steps and at the same time, add a fewgreat nuggets to take away.My only criticism is that my Kindle version of the book has no bibliography.I hesitantly accept this and understand that he may be writing the book fromexperience and memory. This is credible if true. Yet, I do feel there areinstances when citations would have enhanced the reader's perspective.However, no matter how many scenario sessions the reader has facilitated orattended, I would argue that this easy and informative read will proveenjoyable and worthwhile. Well done Woody.

There must be dozens of books on scenario planning on the market. Before discovering this one, I had bought and read (or tried to read) 5 or 6 of these books, and found them uniformly dry, academic, heavy-going... boring. Wade's book is different. It is easily the most readable of the ones I have dipped into, and it is also, without a doubt, the one with the best design, which makes the book a pleasure to read as well as facilitating your ability to understand how scenario planning works.However, in my view its ultimate value is its clarity. First, its step-by-step description of how to implement a scenario planning process is very helpful and would give beginners enough confidence to try it. Second, it provides clear and convincing argumentation for WHY an organisation should think in terms of scenarios. If you are the head of a company and read Wade's reasoning for introducing this way of thinking/planning into your firm, you would be hard-pressed to find any decent arguments for ignoring the technique and simply pressing ahead with the forecasts that you believe (or hope?) will turn out to be right. Scenario planning is about visualising the future so you are not taken by surprise when things turn out the way they do. After reading Wade's book, you will surely realise that by NOT introducing scenario thinking into your company, you are practically condemning it to exactly that fate: being taken by surprise.So if you are responsible for your organisation's long-term viability, this is the best overview and "how-to" primer out there. Start here... it is a quick and even light-hearted read... and then you can "graduate" to the boring academic tomes if you are so inclined.

This book was a joy to read - it is not only visually very attractive and truly entertaining in terms of content, above all it is a genuinely practical handbook on how to conduct a scenario planning exercise. This book stimulates out-of-the-box thinking - something that is particularly helpful for traditional sectors (for example higher education and the hospitality industry) which are generally not known for their eagerness to change or innovate. A must-read for anyone embarking on or involved with strategic planning.

Great read, it has the power to challange the way you approach your future and those that rely on you to inspire ..... do it now buy

I bought this on the strength of the reviews and I feel like I've read a different book to everyone else. Did I get a first draft or something?The first impression is telling: The book is a badly designed. It's an awkward format, it's wide, and some pages have the text running full width making it very hard to read. The formatting and style shifts from page to page with indents on every paragraph, and little visual consistency (other than being uniformly poorly laid out). It even has the designer credited on the cover, which is very odd.Which brings me to the content. The writing is conversational and casually flowing to the point of rambling. It starts with a story about Einstein that is really just nonsense, and continues to mix up vague family anecdotes and other stories with no apparent substructure to the content. It honestly feels like it was just written in one go, designed (poorly), and then published. Job done. They've skipped editing, any supporting research, data, information design or flow, beyond the major sections (which have nonsense titles too, so you need to read the sub-title to know what's in the section.).This whole book basically provides you with:- A general set of trend areas to look out for, there;s kind of 4, or 5, or maybe 11, oh wait, maybe there's hundreds.- Some confused guidance to create a 2 x 2 matrix thingy based on those trends, and a way to prioritize a few for creating scenarios.- It doesn't even go that deep on example scenarios which is just a shocker - Find trends > create scenarios as an unstructured short story!- A few case studies that *kind of* used these ideas, but again with zero supporting data, I suspect these are heavily post-rationalized.There are dozens of better ways to present a scenario that really helps inform strategy and decision making, and this should be half the book IMO - planning and creating scenarios you can USE.Perhaps I'm already more familiar with this topic than i realized. There's practically nothing in here that you won't get from any decent Slideshare about Futurism. Nothing on synthesis, deeper analysis, modelling or really applying any form of rigour to this work whatsoever.This does not advance the perception of futurism as fantasy and guesswork with no accountability. The design is telling, as it echoes the content - some good bits, but mostly it's loose, vague, lacking structure, rigour, clarity and focus, with little care for the future outcomes.