International Business and Public Policy:

Scenario Planning Workshop

Meelis Kitsing
Estonian Business School

IMT, November 18-21, 2023

Outline
• Beyond forecasting
• Weak signals
• Foresight
• Scenario planning
• From scenarios to strategy
• Team assignments
• Example: Danish healthcare scenarios
Beyond forecasting
Conventional forecasting

OPTIMISTIC ALTERNATIVE
FORECAST
PESIMISTIC ALTERNATIVE

• Future is another past, tomorrow

• No breaks in logics allowed
Tomorrow…another yesterday?

Wellbeing
of a turkey

Thanksgiving

0 50 100 150
Days
Source: Taleb/Russel
Weak signals
Foresight
“Why did no one see it coming?”
November 2008, LSE
“A failure of the collective imagination
of many bright people.”
Tim Besley and Peter Hennessy in 2009
„The best way to predict the
future is to invent it.”
Alan Kay
XEROX PARK
1971
“It is better to be rouhgly right
than precisely wrong.”
John Maynard Keynes
 TURBULENCE UNCERTAINTY
NOVELTY AMBIGUITY

© NormannPartners
T U N A environments
Different ways of dealing with the future
• Prediction: stating what will be

• Forecasting: extrapolating and modeling

• Scenarios: simulating different futures

• anticipatory
• (sometimes) normative
Scenario Planning
 TURBULENCE UNCERTAINTY
NOVELTY AMBIGUITY

© NormannPartners
T U N A environments
What color is swan?
What color is panda?
Scenarios: stories about your future larger context

Global, regional and national

- Social values and demographics
- Economic development Survey &
- Technology development
- Natural environment and climate
appreciate
- International regulations

context
Larger
Influence &
Challenges for
actors involved in co-design
your immediate

environment
environment
Stakeholder

Main actor
Control
YOU

25
OECD Going Digital Scenarios

Scenario 1 Scenario 2 Scenario 3 Scenario 4

iChoose Platform Corporate Artificial Invisible
Governments Connectors Hands

Empowered E-governments on Global tech AI-enabled

individuals in a divergent digital companies and their abundance and all-
grassroots world development paths citizen-customers knowing algorithms
Futures of large urban regions in 2030

High economic
development

GREEN RABBITS SHARKS AND MINNOWS

Shared sense of social unity, Social unrest, low social
shared responsibility and cohesion and low trust in
trust in governments governments

GREEN TURTLES STRUGGLING JACKALS

Low economic
development
EU scenarios 2035: Key Drivers
From Scenarios to Strategy
Windtunneling:

A method for testing the robustness of policy options against a

set of scenarios to see how well they stand up against a range of
external conditions.

Source
https://www.dpmc.govt.nz/our-programmes/policy-project/policy-methods-toolbox/futures-thinking/wind-tunnelling
Windtunneling
Robustness testing of options in different
scenarios
Please watch following videos
• Forecasting, prediction, scenario planning
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQuEjFA8DWQ

• Scenario planning methods

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx2mu5FgsXQ&t=297s

• From scenarios to strategy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTLUdoYe2nM
 Teamwork: step 1
• Please select a company that you want to work on in this course. Please
select two most important public policy key drivers affecting the future of
this company.
• Key drivers are characterized by certain degree of uncertainty, i.e. we know
that they are important but we do not know exactly in which direction they
will go.
• Key drivers can be external where different actors cannot influence them or
they can also be to some extent internal where certain actors have
possibility to influence key drivers at least to a certain extent.
• The assignment is about identification of key drivers as well as teamwork
and communication. Before discussing key drivers you have to agree on
how you will organize your teamwork.
• Everybody in your team has to agree to these two key drivers.
• In the end of the workshop your team will give a short presentation about
your key drivers at 12.00 on November 18 for 5 minutes.
 Teamwork: step 2
• On the basis of these two key drivers agreed and presented on
November 18 please construct three-four alternative scenarios
from your company’s until 2035.
• Please describe as much as possible each scenario and how
different scenarios may affect your organization, firm, country
or region. Discuss strategic implications of your scenarios.
• Please prepare a presentation (20 minutes) of your scenarios to
be delivered on November 20 and November 21.
 Teamwork: step 3
• Please email your slides to meelis.kitsing@ebs.ee by 5 pm
on November 20.
• Please give a final presentation for entire class. Each team
has up to 30 minutes of which 20 minutes can be allocated
for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion.
• Please keep in mind that your teamwork will give 30 % of
your grade (20 % for scenario content and 5 % for
communication of scenarios and 5 % for teamwork).
• You have to present throughout scenario planning sessions,
actively participate and ask questions from other teams.
• If you team is present only for your own presentation, you
will lose points for your presentation.
Presentation schedule
• November 20 at 5.45 pm – 9.00 pm: Apple, Boeing, Adani
Group, Mahindra&Mahindra, X and Tesla

• November 21 at 10 am – 1.15 pm: Ford, P&G, Air India,

Facebook, Tata Motors, Vinfast
 Example

Danish Design Centre’s scenarios on future of healthcare 2050:

process, communication and visualization
 Collective
Boxing Future Health

Most for Most Ministry of Root Causes

Body Life

Healthy I Health Bazar

Individual 16
Boxing Future Health

12
Boxing Future Health Et fremtidslaboratorie

11
Boxing Future Health Det meste for de fleste
Boxing Future Health Ministry of root causes
Boxing Future Health Foresight og backcast

FORESIGHT
perspektivering

Fremtidsforskning
og scenarieudvikling

2018
2019 2050
Formgivning
og design

BACKCAST
konkretisering

29