Prepare yourself. In the next decade, powerful waves of social, economic, environmental, political, and tech-driven changes will rapidly unroll, transforming every aspect of our personal and professional lives and communities.
Experts say the best way to take advantage of this disruptive change is not by getting caught up in the next generation of the frantic business/tech hype cycle. Instead, take a meta-view based on multidimensional scenario planning, a powerful strategic method used to move confidently into an uncertain future prepared and flexible.
Multidimensional scenario planning differs from traditional corporate forecasting, the often static method based on experience and current capabilities, which produces only a single probable future as a continuation of the past. Instead, scenario planning clarifies future planning by weaving the input of a wide range of stakeholders into major socioeconomic changes. It’s a clever way to make sense of the big picture. Your organization can then cook up various ways to respond.
“The future is something we all create together,” said a senior executive with Yokogawa, a Japanese multinational technology company.
Organizations are given more control over their future, expanding their ability to punch up their planning and evolve their products, services, and organizational structures.
That’s more important than ever. A recent report notes that, despite hopes of better days ahead, there is still great uncertainty among consumers and businesses. “The implications for companies are clear: Focus on resiliency and cost, but also make intentional bets for longer-term growth,” the report notes. “Companies should also seek to understand the nuanced sentiments and behaviors among different groups of consumers and the categories in which their businesses operate.”
Big changes, new thinking
Scenario building also helps develop next-generation leaders by adding insight and perspective to their study of business strategies. That’s happening at Yokogawa, which is building scenarios using a network of 26 next-generation leaders, ranging in age from their mid-twenties to early forties. “We believe in nurturing the next generation of leaders who can think deeply about these issues and bring future co-creative thinking and actions to the organization,” said a Yokogawa spokesperson.
Known as scenario ambassadors, they are a highly diverse team of employees selected from across the company’s divisions. Their work includes deep research as well as face-to-face interviews with many high-level executives from Yokogawa’s customers and partners.
Together, they’ve created a vibrant collaborative learning community, in which executives from diverse companies and industries participate in an open dialogue, creating the foundation for co-innovation and collaboration between players working on social issues.
The result is not simply a collection of assorted opinions, but a comprehensive identification of trends and issues that transcend industry boundaries. Many incorporate the social changes and changing values brought about by digital technology.
The biggest megatrends
After their research and conversations, the Yokogawa scenario builders identified several influential megatrends that will frame the next 13 years.
- Increasing global risks: Societies all over the world face increased threats to their social and economic stability.
- An accelerating pace of innovation through digital disruption: An expanding use of IoT devices, combined with artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and ultra-low latency networks, provides fertile ground for innovation.
- Broadening biotech applications: Biotechnology R&D rapidly evolves. The result is the human redesign of nature, with applications across highly diverse industries.
- A multipolar world order: Fast-growing nations like China and India shift the list of global power players, as Big Tech non-state actors wield bigger competing influence over both virtual and physical worlds.
- Convergence of sustainability and capital markets: Insistence on corporate transparency, coupled with increasing investor and capital market scrutiny, drive sustainable business model growth.
These megatrends will serve as catalysts for great change. Our data-enabled societies will meet our socio-ecological systems head-on. With these factors in mind, the scenario ambassadors came up with four divergent and possible scenarios that will shape the world.
- Productive harmony: Enabled by technological innovations, humanity prioritizes global socio-ecological advances and cooperation. Human needs are met, while well-being, equality, and environmental stewardship indices become the major standards by which economic health is measured.
- Green digital fortresses: As both governments and private sectors strive toward addressing climate change and global risks, sustainability-focused technological advances occur. But the limitations of data-sharing models result in incremental progress and few breakthrough innovations. Limitations in data flow also slow progress and create a gap in global social uplift.
- Distracted innovation: Open systems and greater data flow enable global innovations to proliferate, often targeting mass consumption. This further strains the balance of natural resources and shifts the socio-ecological focus away from sustainability initiatives. Virtual worlds become borderless and infinite at some point, everything in our physical world may have a digital twin and are used by consumers for escapism from the physical world.
- Missed opportunities: As multiple competing technology infrastructures and standards take hold, overall socio-ecological progress slows. National interests and short-term corporate objectives are prioritized. Fragmented public and private power structures divide international governance, diverting efforts toward addressing global threats to humanity.
The goal: a better home for all
The Yokogawa project is more than a whiteboard exercise. The scenario ambassadors want to build a basis for their future management and organizational model planning as well discover uncertainties and opportunities that lead to long-term value creation. In addition, they hope to avoid business risks from short- and medium-term uncertainties.
More broadly, the scenario ambassadors want to build a collaborative community of like-minded organizations, built on open dialogue and serendipity.
This scenario planning project has led to a wide-range of insights for Yokogawa, as well as a guiding purpose: Utilizing our ability to measure and connect, we fulfill our responsibilities for the future of our planet.
This story was produced by WIRED Brand Lab for Yokogawa.