SCENARIO PLANNING

Getting people to think about the future is near impossible.  People can only know what they know now, unless they are true early adopters or extreme “passionates” in a particular category or field.  Yet the problem remains, how do we bring relevant people into the picture when we are ideating or creating the future of our business and how do we help them engage and unlock pathways for growth?

Workshopping the future of your brand or service

Ruby Future Worlds typically involves a one – two day workshop with three phases :

1. Analysis of the situation/technology/consumer today and trends, new thinking in similar categories
2. Visionary where future visions are built and developed by a task force which may include customers or consumers (or may not)
3. Implementation phase where the visions are engineered into actions and horizon plans

The visionary section can include scenarios with a more developed version of the future formed by Ruby Cha Cha in collaboration with the client and prepared in advance.

Participants’ experiences and critiques of the scenarios will form the basis for future visions and action plans.

The overall aim is to gather knowledge about participants experiences and visions on the topic and any barriers that arose

The scenario workshop works with 25-30 participants and we recommend a combination of both client team members and select people from the broader community

How do we find the right people?

We need the help of creative and technical experts, enthusiasts for the future  and those who will shake up thinking.  Often the lovers or haters of a product or service can be the canary in the coal mine and we shouldn’t shy away from bringing in extreme consumers.

We need to choose or find PASSIONATE/EXTREME OR OUTLIER participants who can point out issues and problems, and current work arounds they may have.

True early adopters or promiscuous consumers can also be more relevant as they tend to have wider experiences and ability to let go of the past and embrace new ideas, products, brands and experiences.

We also need open minded people who can embrace raw ideas and run with the plan.

Most of all we need people with imaginations.

Benefits of Future Workshops

For a business or brand teams to realise their ambition and goals, the business needs to break away from today and spend some time thinking about the future.

Future World workshops can be helpful in integrating a citizen or consumer-led perspective into decision making which:

• Helps management overcome their own bias in relation to an emerging technology, an evolving consumer type or a changing regulatory environment to hypothesise future directions of their business or brand
• Empowers team members to take control of the direction their business needs to head

Scenario Planning

1.The first stage requires great input.  We look to draw on trends reports, existing or commissioned market research, competitive intelligence, opinion pieces and other inputs that can provoke thought

2.Scenarios can then be developed using insights into the different possibilities from our audit to find behavioural or technological drivers of the future. These are not based predictions. Instead, we will create stories of four (or more) different possible futures, imagining how the world could look after 2030, in order to challenge assumptions and stimulate thinking about the present and implications for future.

3.We will use the final versions of the scenarios to formulate robust future plans, to promote reflection on your brand or business in all of this and provide  greater confidence in our strategic thinking

4.The final stage is always about implementation and grounding our future based insights into action plans and goals for the business, with key watchouts or research, capability and financing considerations also covered.