Tao Ma Learning Log

Scenario thinking has been called “the gentle art of perceiving the future”. Unfortunately I knew nothing about it before I study your course. After only 3 weeks’ learning, now I realize that it is an unique and impressive thinking method and scenario planning, however, is not only about making better predictions of the future, but also about making better decisions today. Revealing the driving forces, research question, and uncertainty can help us recognize the possible trend of certain business situation and even deal with a dilemma in our real life.

The first tool that enlightens me is the system mapping. The real business world is a very complex and interrelated system. At first glance, you don’t know where to commence, not mention to solve the problem. However, system map provide us one of means to figure out the complicated business situation. Completing the system map, you also know the root of the system, the relationship between the entities, key point that play most important role in the system, and high leverage that has main influence to the system. The messy map is normal and even good. The messier the map is, the more insights you have to the system and the more explicit what the system is. From the messy map, you can understand how the system operates and what its high leverage is. Consequently, implicit business circumstance becomes explicit map to you. So we can say that the messy map is the base of all the following work.

The second I have learned is that the effect of research question. Although future is hard to forecast, it is logical result of some current factors and has more than one possibility. The scenario must base on the real data of every aspect of current situation. For example, in order to predict the future of the internet, you should know how many user is using the internet now, what kind of technology is being adopted by the internet, and what is the up to date technology can change the usage of internet. Only after you know ask why and figure out the answer to the question puzzling you, you could find the way to the future.

The most important discovery for me is that scenario thinking actually is a process from single to complex and then to simple. At the beginning, we assume the future as a matter of course. The internet will develop bigger and bigger, the world will become peaceful and richer. So we can say the future runs at a single way. However, things do not go well as we expect. A new technology may rise and change our life and business world completely; Economy could go to recession; the conflict in local region may result in the world war. All of which add the uncertainty to the current situation and the future become plausible to us. By the help of system mapping and driving forces, we can figure out all entities in current circumstance and therefore understand the relationship between them. Thirdly, finding the key uncertainty and developing the scenarios give us a simplified future. Under certain assumption, we can see the way before us and where the destination is. So we get our simple future.

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Finally, just as mentioned in the course, an iceberg is a simple illustration of what one tries to map with scenario thinking:

What is happening to the iceberg we can see - what is above the sea level?
What is happening that we aren’t aware of - what is underneath the sea level?
What are the driving forces that affect the iceberg - the winds, the currents, the temperatures of air and sea?
How will these driving forces influence the shape and movement of the iceberg - where are we going - what will the future be?


Future is uncertain, there are many amazing things waiting for us to explore, just as the interesting course. Let us ‘scenario’ your future is that….