For over 30 years, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group has used these scenarios to identify business risks and opportunities in ways forecasts cannot. Now for the first time these scenerios are available to the public. This book portrays three plausible futures with contrasting economic, political, and regulatory features and distinct implications for the energy system.
The Shell Global Scenarios is an outstanding example of the craft of scenario design as well as a creative and insightful look at the forces shaping the world. The text is well written. The graphics are memorable and thought provoking. The commentaries by leading thinkers from various fields add depth. Scenario design can take many forms and be adapted for many purposes. The Shell approach is arguably the best for understanding and speculating about issues that cut across multiple socio-economic, technical, and political dimensions. Modern scenario design began with Herman Kahn and Anthony Wiener’s “The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation”(MacMillan, 1967). While we can be entertained by the misdirection of many of their speculative conclusions, their framework set the stage for much of the scenario work that has followed. My only regret about the excellent Shell effort is that Pierre Wack is given credit for coining the term “scenario.” While Wack is a giant in this field, the credit for introducing “scenario” in the modern use of the term should go to Kahn and Wiener.
Shell was one of the earliest innovators in the area of scenario planning, and they have done extremely well by this method. Quite a few excellent authors have come out of Shell, such as Kees van der Heijden’s books Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation and The Sixth Sense: Accelerating Organizational Learning with Scenarios.
This book is disappointing for a number of reasons. This is meant to be a popular book, with lots of nice visual effects. Sadly, the content could and the unwieldy shape and heft reduced to a thin paperback, and it should have been. The binding itself is atrocious, and simply does not work. Sigh.
That said, there is a good amount of conceptual material here to chew on for the upcoming years, though it will likely not remain viable all the way until 2025. There are three main configurations plotted in the book: low trust globalization, “open doors”, and “flags”. In LTG, security and market efficiencies are the overriding factors driving the shape of things to come, and social cohesion or the “force of community” is weaker than the other two forces. In open doors, social cohesion and market incentives combine for a more fruitful outcome (both economically and socially). In flags, community and security overcome market incentives and a more distrustful and nationalistic scenario emerges, the darkest of the three broad global scenarios.
These broad possible areas are then reflected through a wide range of issues from demography and migrations, to African futures, to climate change and biodiversity, and to legal and regulatory environments, among others.
Good content, flawed format.
Amazing… a real view into how executives contemplate various world events and how they will impact on their organisation. A must read for any executive, business planner or consultant.