For this blog post, I looked for an organization that did not use scenario planning in the past when it would have benefitted them, but instead they used traditional forecasting. That organization is Sony. Sony was famous for creating the Walkman that later became the portable CD player (Hernandez, 2018). Although the Walkman became famous in Sony’s name, Apple managed to surpass them in market shares due to the fact that Sony did not use scenario planning. One has to wonder if Sony had used scenario planning instead of traditional forecasting, would they have surpassed Apple in market shares?

            Scenario planning is defined best as identifying critical uncertainties and realities of what might happen in the future of an organization and making assumptions on what that future might be and how it will affect the organization over time, and how the organization might change. Using scenario planning you must not only identify critical uncertainties in your organization, but identify the driving forces, develop a number of plausible scenarios, and discuss all of the implications each scenario will bring. The way scenario planning supports innovation and planning for change is that it aims to eliminate two of the most common errors that is made in any strategic analysis. Those two common errors are underprediction and overprediction of an organization’s future. That is what makes scenario planning different from other methods.

            Scenario planning helps keep organizations from underpredicting and overpredicting its future by suggesting for them to put their knowledge into two areas. Those two areas are things they are uncertain about, and things they know about. Starting with this helps direct the scenario planning in a direction that helps the organization be able to create different scenarios. Forces involved with creating these scenarios are  identifying driving forces and trends, brainstorming future scenarios, creating a good working scenario planning template, developing scenarios, and then evaluating each one. Once an organization has evaluated each scenario, they should update strategies and policies accordingly to each scenario they plan to implement in their plan.

            There are several types of scenario planning models, and they are quantitative models, probability-based scenarios, Interactive (“War Gaming”) Scenarios, Event-Driven (or Operational) Scenarios, Normative Scenarios, and Strategic Management (or Alternative Futures) Scenarios (Thomas, 2012). In the case of Sony, I believe they would have gotten better results using the normative scenario. It was at its most active in the 1960’s and 1970’s. This is around the time that Sony starting to develop the idea of the Walkman. Normative scenario is a cross between a vision statement and a scenario environment in that it helps the organization think more into what it wants to be in the environment that will most likely emerge.  The organization should develop scenarios that reflect the operating environment that the organization wishes to see come about. If Sony would have put more thought into how fast technology will grow, and into other aspects, and used the normative scenario method, I believe they would have been more successful.

            The type of scenario planning model or technique I would use in the future would be based on what type of business I had and what I wished to accomplish. There are several factors I would have to consider. Those factors would be the type of technology and how it would grow in the business, who my target customers were, what my business objectives are, and what I wished to accomplish with the business in the future. The way I feel scenario planning would account for social impacts of change in any model I choose, is that I would factor into my plan how products or services of my company would impact the customers and their well-being. I would consider how society may change in the future in order that I can meet their needs.  This would be factored into my scenarios.

NOTE: THE PHOTOS IN THIS BLOG POST WERE FOUND ON GOOGLE IMAGES. I didn't not design them. They do not belong to me. 

References

Hernandez, M. (2018, February 24). Sony Walkman and Scenario Planning. MK Hernandez Wordpress: https://mkhernandez.wordpress.com/2018/02/24/sony-didnt-use-proper-scenario-type-planning-on-the-walkman/

Thomas, C. (2012, May 16). Types of Scenario Planning. Futures Strategy Group: https://www.futuresstrategygroup.com/fsg-blog/types-scenario-planning/