herman kahn is regarded as the father of the scenario method.
herman kahn is regarded as the father of the scenario method.
who is regarded as the father of the scenario method?
herman kahn
most authors attribute the introduction of scenario planning to herman kahn through his work for the us military in the 1950s at the rand corporation where he developed a technique of describing the future in stories as if written by people in the future. he adopted the term "scenarios" to describe these stories. in 1961 he founded the hudson institute where he expanded his scenario work to social forecasting and public policy. one of his most controversial uses of scenarios was to suggest that a nuclear war could be won. though kahn is often cited as the father of scenario planning, at the same time kahn was developing his methods at rand, gaston berger was developing similar methods at the centre d’etudes prospectives which he founded in france. his method, which he named 'la prospective', was to develop normative scenarios of the future which were to be used as a guide in formulating public policy. during the mid-1960s various authors from the french and american institutions began to publish scenario planning concepts such as 'la prospective' by berger in 1964 and 'the next thirty-three years' by kahn and wiener in 1967. by the 1970s scenario planning was in full swing with a number of institutions now established to provide support to business including the hudson foundation, the stanford research institute (now sri international), and the sema metra consulting group in france. several large companies also began to embrace scenario planning including dhl express, dutch royal shell and general electric.
scenario planning
second generation scenarios have a more explorative character. scenarios can be intended to explore possibilities for the future, without pronouncing upon their probability or desirability. scenarios can then be defined as "a tool for ordering alternative future environments in which one's decision may be played out" (peter schwartz, 1991,). these scenarios are based on the presumption that nobody can predict, and therefore should not try to predict the future. "the only relevant discussions about the future are those where we succeed from shifting from the question "whether something will happen" to the question "what will we do if something happens" (arie de geus, 1998,). an example of this type of scenario was developed by shell (the shell scenario method).
transition scenario