Scenario construction via Delphi and cross-impact analysis

Article history: Received 3 November 2010 Received in revised form 4 March 2011 Accepted 10 March 2011 Available online 19 April 2011 Since its origins, decision makers have broadly used the Delphi method as a collaborative technique for generating important events and scenarios about what may happen in the future. This is a complexprocessbecauseof thedifferent interrelations and thepotential synergetic effects among the relevant events related to a decision. This fact, along with the uncertainty about the occurrence or non-occurrence of the events, makes the scenario generation task a challenging issue inDelphi processes. In the 1960's, Cross-Impact Analysis (CIA) appeared as amethodological tool for dealingwith this complexity. CIA canbeused for creatingaworkingmodel out froma set of significant events. CIA has been combined with other methodological approaches in order to increase its functionality and improve its final outcome. In this paper, the authors propose a new step-by-stepmodel for scenario-analysis based on amerger of Turoff's alternative approach to CIA and the technique called Interpretive StructuralModeling (ISM). The authors' proposal adds tools for detecting critical events and for producing a graphical representation to the previous scenariogeneration methods based on CIA. Moreover, it allows working with large sets of events without using large computational infrastructures. The authors present sufficient information and data so that anyone who wishes to may duplicate the implementation of the process. Additionally they make explicit a set of requirements for carrying out a Delphi process for a group to develop a set of significant events, collectivelymake the estimations of cross impacts, and to support a continuous planning processwithin an organization. They use two examples to discuss operational issues and practical implications of the model. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.