 Andrew Bishop, Senior Project Associate, Strategic Foresight Team, World Economic Forum
"As a Senior Project Associate with the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Foresight Team, which specialises in scenario planning, system dynamics, and related foresight methodologies, my main motivation for participating in the Oxford Scenarios Programme was to test and complement my pre-existing experience with scenarios. The World Economic Forum, known for its global, regional, and industry scenarios, has three objectives at the core of its foresight activities: to generate insight by making sense of complexity, to build communities by creating trust through common understanding, and to catalyse action by identifying collaborative strategic options. With this in mind, I found that the Oxford Scenarios Programme was particularly interesting in its ability to combine learning opportunities for both single-organisation scenario planning, particularly in the business realm, and inter-organisational and multi-stakeholder scenario planning, as cultivated at the World Economic Forum.
To this end, the programme's faculty certainly is one of its strongest assets. Indeed, having benefited from Angela Wilkinson's, Rafael Ramirez's, and Kees van der Heijden's unique perspectives on various previous occasions, I looked forward to engaging with them as well as the programme’s fellow participants. In fact, joining a class cohort of mid- and senior-level corporate and public service strategists from across the world was a highly stimulating aspect of the course. Many of us are still in contact, and it is always enriching to exchange with a range of professionals who share the World Economic Forum’s interest in foresight and strategic thinking.
Overall, the course’s subtle and well-designed balance between official and informal learning sessions allowed participants to return from it with a set of pertinent, concrete, and actionable take-aways to implement in one’s daily work and contrast with well-established competing methods."
 Ebru Yarikkaya, GeoPost Intercontinental, Paris
"I work for GeoPost Intercontinental, a subsidiary of GeoPost, the Express Parcel entity of French Groupe La Poste. Having worked on several M&A projects in East Europe, Middle East and South Asia, my current position is Strategic Development Director.
My main reason for attending the Oxford Scenario Programme (OSP) is because the program fitted my professional background and I was looking to enrich knowledge and techniques of the strategic planning process. My personal research before joining the programme showed that the scenario techniques were in use by many reputable corporations (i.e. WEF, Shell, Nokia…) and governments and hence I decided that this programme was a perfect fit for me.
Through presenting an excellent synthesis of academic and professional approach, OSP took us on a rigorous and enriching journey of learning. The programme was designed to make us think the unthinkable and envisage different scenarios that are equally plausible and may influence business in different ways.
Besides laying the basis with the theoretical concepts, the programme was designed to make us work on real client cases and to finally present potential scenarios to the clients. The diversity of each work group enriched the variety of the discussions and the scenarios that we produced.
It has been of additional benefit that we were offered the chance to learn about the experiences of scenario peers, to join academic discussions and to visit remarkable parts of the Oxford University.
OSP is a professionally designed, high caliber programme in terms of tutors, participant diversity and the overall agenda. The programme certainly provided me food for thought on the strategic thinking mindset and reinforced the importance of maintaining a visionary approach for the future. I will apply the techniques in my work and see how our business models endure in differing future scenarios.
The lessons from this program are invaluable in terms of learning scenario techniques, building relationships and presenting our best professional presence. On a personal note, I am delighted that I have had the opportunity to attend the programme and meet such a remarkable and professional team." |
 Fredrik Lavén, Researcher, Normann Partners, Sweden
"Having recently joined a management consulting firm which focuses on strategic renewal and indeed scenarios, I found the Oxford Scenarios Programme an excellent introduction to both the theory and practice of my scenario planning! It fitted my background as an organisational researcher and my new business consulting career exceptionally well. While the programme was intellectually challenging and insightful, it was also very hands-on and relevant, providing tools for facilitating strategic conversations.
On the very first day we were told that the learning experience we were about to embark on was analogous with a circus. Indeed, the programme was filled with lively impressions, surprises, confusion, complexity, intensity and entertainment - just as I imagine a circus. Nevertheless, the programme pedagogy, alternating between lectures, group work and reflection sessions, provided a creative and stimulating environment whereby the programme particpants could make sense of how scenarios can be used to understand and prepare for alternative futures. In other words, the programme was an intellectual and practical circus in the best sense of the word.
During the programme, the faculty skilfully presented theoretical concepts, linking them to real scenario cases in an accessible way and invited the course participants to discuss and reflect upon scenario work. Moreover, the course actually allowed the participants to practice scenario techniques by offering opportunities to work with a real client organisation. We went from identifying the purpose of scenarios, mapping the client's strategic landscape and its key uncertainties, to building, deepening and communicating scenarios. And throughout this process we were given the necessary props and facilitation, which greatly supported our own practising of scenario work.
The open environment and the diverse group of participants also provided an excellent opportunity for networking and learning from one another. The participants came from a wide array of backgrounds and cultures, which gave rise to interesting discussions and deepened perspectives on scenarios. Thanks to the Oxford Scenarios Programme I now feel prepared for, and look forward to, engaging in my first sharp scenario project."
 Sarah Roberts, NPI Programme Planning Leader, Airbus, UK
"I work on the planning of future aircraft programmes for Airbus. The typical lifespan of a commercial passenger jet is approximately 30 years, so I am familiar with the concept of trying to build scenarios to help with long-term strategy and planning. Or so I thought!
What I very quickly learnt during my week on the Oxford Scenarios Programme (OSP) was the difference between forecasting and scenarios work. ‘Forecasts’ analyse the probability of certain events happening in a future that is similar to our present, whilst ‘Scenarios’ focus on unique events and their plausibility in a future that is different to our current world. It very quickly became clear that my approach up until this enlightening week had been a hybrid of the two, and this realisation alone had the potential to add real value to my work.
Without giving away any of the ‘secrets’ of the OSP, the course takes its participants through a learning journey which makes the most of the wealth of experience afforded by the course tutors. The OSP uses a combination of real life client cases, lectures from tutors, group tasks and individual reflections. Crucially, the OSP tutors themselves understand that the dynamics of the course can vary between the groups, and so re-iterate the need throughout for feedback. This added a flexible element to the course, thereby enabling a richer learning experience.
The skills we were taught during the lectures were put into practice within our client case groups. This was an extremely useful precursor to returning to work and utilising what I have learnt here. Although the client cases on the OSP were worked within a limited timeframe, we followed the same process from conception to completion that I am now undertaking within my own organisation.
The OSP does not claim that it can supply us with a set of tools from which we can predict or calculate the future. It is not quantitative in its approach, but neither does it issue a crystal ball to each participant on arrival! What the OSP does do is provide a framework to help us ask the right questions about our future, to aid the development of those ideas, and engage the stakeholders. Furthermore, the OSP allows us to give credence to the idea that we can think the ‘unthinkable’, and that by doing so we will be better prepared for the future that we face."
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 Andres Spokoiny, Area Director, JDL, France
"I work as Regional Director of an American NGO that manages humanitarian, welfare and social development programmes in over 60 countries. In my work, I have to interact with governments, local NGOs, donors, clients, etc. I am based in Paris, France, but I work mainly in Central and Eastern Europe.
I came to this line of work after a career change that took me away from the corporate world. In my previous professional life, I was in charge of HR training and development with IBM corp. in Latin America. My academic background is as diverse as my professional experience. I studied business, education and organisational behaviour.
In my current line of work, the ability of thinking strategically about the future may, for many people, mean nothing less than the difference between life and death. Do I have the resources to cope with a natural or man-made disaster? Do I know what parts of the world will suffer conflicts? Am I ready to evacuate a large number of people if a war broke out? But where could a war break out? Are my donors going to continue giving money? How are economic changes going to affect their giving patterns? How are changes in the values of society going to affect me, my donors and my clients?
None of these questions have a single-handed answer. During the Oxford Scenarios Programme (OSP) I learned valuable tools to analyse, deconstruct and organise this uncertainty. The OSP does not teach you to predict the future; it even discourages you from trying that. It takes you along in a fantastic adventure to know yourself, your business and your context. It helps you discern and analyse the contextual driving forces that will shape your future and that of your clients, suppliers and competitors. By doing that, it makes you realise that the future cannot be simply extrapolated from the present. One has to imagine multiple futures, as if reading a book that can have different endings. The programme helps you imagine different scenarios, as 'stories of the future', that are equally plausible, and yet, may affect the business in different ways.
I learned that scenarios are a tool for strategy, but are not the strategy itself. Scenarios are tools to make sense of my context, to analyse the relevance of my values and my norms and, also, to develop a 'windtunnel' strategy. Scenarios allow you to play simulation games. To ask the 'what if' question. What will happen to my 'business model' if X or Y? How will my current strategy fare in different alternative scenarios? Which of my critical advantages will become irrelevant if the world is different than what I expect it to be? What kind of resources, human or financial, do I need in order to cope with the different realities?
In a way, 'scenarios' is about thinking the unthinkable. And yet, I learned that scenario work is not done in some ivory tower. Scenarios need to be the product of organisational conversation. It's about creating a context for exchange and dissent, because when imagining alternative futures, you are not concerned with the 'truth', you want to have as many options as possible. Indeed, this conversational nature of the scenario work is reflected in the pedagogy of the course itself. Presentations 'teach' the technique but group case-studies and actual scenario planning are a key component of the programme. People from different backgrounds are encouraged to exchange freely in the groups; the more diverse the group the richer the scenarios that are produced. Facilitation acts as a sort of catalyst in group processes, rather than classic 'teaching'. At some point in the course, the pieces of the cognitive puzzle fall into place and one finds oneself capable of developing scenarios and using them. The course manages to achieve the perfect mix between academic rigor and practicality; between intellectual depth and business applicability.
I will definitely apply the scenario techniques in my work, in order to test my strategy and to see if my business model fares well under different circumstances. I'm certainly afraid of being a 'sorcerer's apprentice' with a rather complex technology, but the technique seems to be solid enough to resist my inexperience in it. Scenarios can help us become a 'future driven' organisation. At least, it can help us initiate a strategic conversation and that in itself will be worthwhile.
Last, but not least, the programme has allowed me to become a part of a network of scenarios practitioners, including both faculty and participants. This network will be an invaluable resource when implementing the techniques in the real world. I hope to stay in touch with lecturers and colleagues and share experience, learn from each other's successes and failures and enrich our mutual knowledge base." |