a triarchy press publication
Facing The Fold: Essays on Scenario Planning by James Ogilvy
Publication Date: 28th February 2011
No of Pages: 312
Book type: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-908009-22-7
List Price: £25
Offer Price: £15
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How do we face the uncertainty and complexity of the future? An overly optimistic perspective can be motivating but easily dismissed as naive or shallow; the pessimistic outlook may be considered to be deeper and more 'knowing' but could lead to inaction. But limiting our visions of the future to simply one or other of these two 'branches' would mean adopting a position that is ultimately nothing more than a fatalistic rut. Facing The Fold is a collection of highly regarded journal essays about how scenario thinking uses the capacious space of the 'fold' to encourage thinking around alternative scenarios - to create the future we both want and need.
Scenarios are not predictions, nor are they strategies. Scenarios are stories - narratives of alternative futures, designed to highlight the risks and opportunities involved in specific strategic issues.
The book is divided into 3 clear sections: Section I is about the 'nuts and bolts' of scenario planning and, as outlined in the first chapter co-authored with Peter Schwartz, the steps involved in the practice of developing scenarios, and the key considerations to ensure successful scenario planning. Ogilvy then discusses to what extent scenario planning, which is generally considered to be an 'art', can also be considered as an integral part of the new sciences, particularly complexity theory. The narrative of scenario planning is of particular importance to complexity practitioners. Like complexity approaches, the advantage of scenarios is that they take into account the values and the contextual complexity surrounding the community and provide a way to reflect on the consequences of strategy changes.
Section II situates scenario planning in the larger context of the human sciences of anthropology, psychology, literary criticism, philosophy and sociology. The essays in Chapters 4 and 5 originally appeared in Futures Research Quarterly. Parts of those essays formed the spine of the book, Creating Better Futures, but they appear here in their more fully developed original form. Chapter 6, "What Business Strategists Can Learn from Sartre," originally appeared as a cover story in Strategy+Business. First published in Singapore and now made available to English and American readers, Chapter 7 "Organizational Learning, Evolution, and Scenarios" reflects on the work of Gregory Bateson and how it applies in the context of organizational learning.
Section III offers a set of case studies - actual scenarios created for real projects. Opening with a chapter on lessons learnt from working in both the public and the private sector, this is followed by two in-depth case studies on the future of higher education in California and K-12 public education in Seattle. The challenges and opportunities that were faced at the time are uncannily similar to current problems in the funding of higher education facilities around the world. Alternative scenarios to the momentum of increasing deficit and declining quality were developed at the time, and the author provides an afterword to show how these scenarios have held up over time.
About the Author
Jay Ogilvy began his career teaching philosophy at Williams College and Yale University. In 1979 he joined Peter Schwartz at SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute), and then assisted Peter and the scenario team at Shell in the early 1980s. In 1987 Peter and Jay cofounded Global Business Network together with Stewart Brand, Napier Collyns, and Lawrence Wilkinson. Jay is the author or editor of eight books including Many Dimensional Man, and Creating Better Futures.