the point is to make strategic decisions that will be sound for all plausible futures. No matter what future takes place, you are much more likely to be ready for it—and influential in it—if you have thought seriously about scenarios.

“imaginative leap into the future.”

Scenarios are thus the most powerful vehicles I know for challenging our “mental models” about the world, and lifting the “blinders” that limit our creativity and resourcefulness.

This method is the scenario—a vehicle, as my colleague Napier Collyns says, for an “imaginative leap into the future.”

The point is not to “pick one preferred future,” and hope for it to come to pass (or, even, work to create it—though there are some situations where acting to create a better future is a useful function of scenarios). Nor is the point to find the most probable future and adapt to it or “bet the company” on it. Rather, the point is to make strategic