Decision-driven scenarios for assessing four levels of uncertainty

Hugh Courtney is a lecturer at the University of Maryland’s R.H. Smith School of Business, a senior fellow at the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at The Wharton School, and a management consultant ([email protected]). He is the author of 20/20 Foresight: Crafting Strategy in an Uncertain World, Harvard Business School Press, 2001. S cenario planning would seem to be the perfect tool for managers making strategic decisions in today’s highly uncertain, turbulent business environments. Yet according to a Bain & Company survey, a declining number of business executives use scenario planning tools[1]. Why have so many companies abandoned scenario planning at a time when one might expect it to be most useful?