Scenario development without probabilities — focusing on the most important scenario

Abstract

Within foresight management in general and scenario development in particular, the question is often asked: “For what scenario do I have to be prepared?” Since there are manifold approaches of scenario technique, the ways to answer this question with the help of scenario technique are also manifold. Scenario approaches using probabilities, for example, would recommend emphasizing the most probabilistic scenario. However, the consideration of probabilities, in our opinion, is not always useful. From a combinatorial point of view, any given scenario has an infinitesimal probability of being right, since there are so many possible variations (Gee et al. in Deep News Glob Bus Netw 2(4):199, 1991). Additionally, when regarding all possible developments that may be relevant for a scenario, each development has only an infinitesimal probability of coming true. Following these thoughts, the consideration of probabilities often has no additional benefit and, therefore, is not necessarily needed within scenario development. In this paper, the use of probabilities in scenarios will be discussed. On the one hand, this includes a discussion about scenarios in which the considerations do not make sense. On the other hand, the paper will also show an approach of considering additional information within the scenario creation process to select the most important scenario.