Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques

by Michael Michalko

BLUEPRINT The procedures for preparing for the future are: Identify a particular problem in your business. State a particular decision that has to be made. Identify the forces (economic, technological, product lines, competition, and so on) that have an impact on the decision. Build four or five future scenarios based on the principal forces. Use all the available information and develop scenarios that will give you as many different and plausible possibilities as a pinball in play. Develop the scenarios into stories or narratives by varying the forces that impact the decision. Change the forces (interest rates escalate, a key performer quits, need for your product or service disappears, etc.) and combine them into different patterns to describe the possible consequences of your decision over the next five years. Search for business opportunities within each scenario. Then explore the links between opportunities across the range of your scenarios, and actively search for new ideas.