The goal is not to identify what will happen, but to stretch the mind to think about what might happen. A scenario-planning exercise therefore asks participants to imagine four radically different futures that could come about as a result of current trends. As Peter Schwartz, one of the originators of the technique, wrote in the introduction to his book about it, The Art of the Long View, the scenario is “a vehicle . . . for an imaginative leap into the future.”
