Scenarios: an explorer's guide (shell)

Scenarios: An Explorer's Guide

This book is written for people who would like to build and use scenarios, and also for those who want to enhance their scenario thinking skills. We visualise our audience as people who are curious by nature, who want to make a difference, and who are highly motivated to acquire a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them.

EXPLORING TheFuture
Scenarios: An Explorer ’s Guide

For more information and our latest scenarios visit www.shell.com/scenarios Original designs by Peter Grundy © 2008 Shell International BV All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, published or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of Shell International BV.Contents

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Foreword: Exploring the Future Using This Book What Are Scenarios and Why Use Them? Why? Preparation Pioneering Map-making Navigation Reconnaissance Preparation Further Reading

Exploring the Future
The future is ‘terra incognita’: although we may be able to guess the outcome of events that lie close to us, as we project beyond this we enter anunmapped zone full of uncertainty. Paradoxically, the range of options this reveals can seem paralysing. No one can definitively map the future, but we can explore the possibilities in ways that are specifically intended to support decision-making. At Shell we use scenario building to help us wrestle with the developments and behaviours that shape what the future may hold and prepare ourselves moreeffectively. We also believe it can inspire individuals and organisations to play a more active role in shaping a better future - for themselves, or even on a global scale. In this book, we use a metaphor of exploration and map-making to describe how we think about building scenarios. Like a set of maps describing different aspects of a landscape, scenarios provide us with a range of perspectiveson what might happen, helping us to navigate more successfully. Exploration - of a territory or the future - involves both analytical thinking rooted in whatever facts are clear, and also informed intuition. This book describes the approach used to develop a set of global scenarios, ‘People and Connections’ several years ago under the guidance of Ged Davis. Since then, scenarios guided by AlbertBressand have been published, and more recently Shell has published a summary of its Energy Scenarios, ‘Scramble’ and ‘Blueprints’, developed under the guidance of the current leadership. These have built on, and extended, our approach. Indeed, Shell has been working with scenarios for almost 40 years, and we are still learning. Since the environment we live and work in is constantly changing,building scenarios demands continual innovation and creativity. I hope this book will inspire and encourage you and your organisation to build scenarios and embark on your own exploration of the future.

Jeremy B. Bentham Global Business Environment Shell International BV For more information on Shell's energy scenarios see www.shell.com/scenarios

Using This Book
The book is written in twoparallel streams, one explaining the intent behind scenario work and the other providing examples from our global scenarios. The summary of the scenarios themselves, entitled People and Connections: Global Scenarios to 2020, is published as a PDF on our website at www.shell.com/scenarios together with our previous and more recent scenarios. This book is intended to be of relevance to those wishing toundertake scenario projects. Obviously, there are many different reasons for building scenarios and this book cannot describe them all. We have tried, instead, to present the most comprehensive coverage of Shell’s scenario work by selecting specific examples.

Left, intensions
Widening perspectives

Our experience, training, current fashions and familiar challenging assumptions, ideas can...