Scenarios for Success: Turning Insights into Action - Rilegato

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 0470512989 ISBN 13: 9780470512982

Casa editrice: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2007

Riassunto

Properly researched and intelligently deployed, scenario planning is today’s most powerful tool for understanding and preparing for an uncertain future. Yet it remains a niche approach, poorly understood by leaders at large. To bring it into the strategy mainstream, leaders need advice on how to turn concepts (scenarios) into actions (strategy).

Scenarios for Success delivers a unique and coherent account of the state of the scenario planning art. It is aimed particularly at those trying to implement its findings. Striking a balance between theory and practice, the contributors show how and why the core techniques of scenario thinking have endured and are still valuable, while bringing new tools and processes that keep scenario planning in touch with modern realities.

Su questo libro

Informazioni sull?autore

Bill Sharpe is an independent researcher in science, technology and society. He was a research director at Hewlett Packard Laboratories where he led research into everyday applications of digital technology. He introduced scenario methods to HP for long-range research and business management, and pioneered the use of scenario methods for supporting business innovation. In 1999 he co-founded an innovation and consulting company, The Appliance Studio, and now specializes in long range technology studies for business strategy and public policy foresight. He has worked extensively for the UK government’s Foresight Programme in areas such as Cognitive Systems, Cybertrust, and Intelligent Infrastructure. With a background in computing and psychology, he is particularly interested in drawing on leading edge research in cognition and systems thinking to find new ways of tackling complex problems. He works independently and as an associate with several organizations in the futures field.

Kees van der Heijden is an Associate Fellow of Templeton College, University of Oxford, and a Visiting Professor at the Netherlands Business School, Nijenrode University. He is also Emeritus Professor of the University of Strathclyde Graduate School of Business, Glasgow, where he has taught General and Strategic Management since 1990. In addition, he is a co-founder of the Global Business Network. Before joining Strathclyde, he was in charge of scenario planning at Royal Dutch/Shell, as head of the Group’s Business Environment Division. This involved advising top management on strategy, as well as development of the process of scenario planning in which Shell has taken a worldwide leading role.

He specializes in scenario planning, strategic change and institutional strategic management processes, and has consulted widely in these areas.

Dalla quarta di copertina

How can we look over the horizon of the known and commit ourselves to new courses of action? How do we bring together knowledge and creativity to make decisions that have far reaching impact for success, and even survival? How can we put the forces shaping our world into play with emerging possibilities and come up with a unique entrepreneurial insight? Scenario thinking has stood the test of time as a way to tackle these questions in every domain from long-range global public policy to the business plan of a start-up.

In 2005 the Oxford Futures Forum brought together 70 leading futures practitioners to share their experience of how to use scenarios for organizational success: how to develop deep insight into the drivers of change, and how to turn that insight into effective action. The Forum revealed a vibrant practice that is developing many new approaches to extend scenario approaches to cope with the increasing demands for rapid response to a complex world. Where many management methods attempt to reduce decisions to some standardized process to deliver fixed results in fixed times, scenario thinking is still rooted in making space for the essential magic of original insight to happen.

These contributions, never published before, bring the newest thinking in the field of scenarios to a wider audience. Critical reflection on many case studies drawn from first hand experience has produced an invaluable resource for organizations aiming to achieve leadership in their strategic thinking and action.

Dal risvolto di copertina interno

The era of clear dangers, simple problems and predict-and-control approaches is past. Many groups and organizations are searching for more effective means to survival, continued success and strategic renewal in a context clouded by competing interests, multiple worldviews and turbulent change. As cycles of fashion in managerial practices shorten, scenario thinking and planning has endured with continued, if not increased, relevance. After over 30 years of practice, it increasingly permeates the public, private and civic sectors. Why? As various chapters of this book emphasize, this continued interest stems not from the success in building a set of alternative futures or scenarios - per se, nor from methodological coherence. Instead, success relates to the effectiveness of scenarios as purposeful interventions aimed at organizational sense-making, innovation and development.

Dr Angela Wilkinson, Director of Scenario Planning and Futures Research, James Martin Institute for Science and Civilisation

Dettagli dell?edizione

• Editore: John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Data di pubblicazione: 2007
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0470512989
• ISBN 13: 9780470512982
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 409
• Redattore: Sharpe Bill
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile