Kondratieff's economic waves and future scenarios planning: An approach for organizations

Abstract

This manuscript aims to present connections between scenario building techniques and Kondratieff's long economic waves, as a way of identifying patterns in medium and long-term planning for companies' future scenarios. This essay considers two different conceptual contributions to improve forecasting on organizations taking as a departure point Kondratieff's economic waves and Schwartz's future scenario planning. Analyzing these two theoretical contributions, we concluded that the information obtained through the path of Kondratieff's waves can delineate future scenarios as a way to anticipate challenges, opportunities, and threats for organizations' contingency planning. As a contribution for practitioners, considering these two approaches together enables greater performance for strategic planning of future scenarios that can be applied by organizations across a range of industries.