Sunday, March 18, 2007

Week 9: Scenario Analysis

Scenario analysis is a very powerful tool to deal with uncertainty which is very common in our daily lives by considering the alternative outcomes. And is very important in decision making. A scenario is a hypothetical sequence of events constructed on uncertainty outcomes.

When there is new technology or new policy, a company need to forecast the outcome. What will other company do, will customer preferences changes, will structural changes occur, if there is structural changes what will be outcome. In that case change in strategy is needed.

The first step in scenario analysis we need to identify the stakeholders, all the parties that will be affected by the new policy(customer, producer, worker, competitor, investor). Then try to predict what will be the decisions of all these stakeholders. Then the permutation of interactions of all the decisions can be reduced to a few reasonable sets. It is also needed to interview the stakeholders, asking their opinion and what they will do when encountering such problem.
Then start to build the scenario, it is best to have 3 or 4 dimensions. Each dimension has only two states i.e. positive and negative. e.g. to deal with free wireless, the dimensions to be used could be:
1. the capability of consumers.
2. the law and regulations.
3. compliment service

Then develop the competing strategy. Then use the game theory (what will happen if this strategy is applied). Validate all strategies. Choose the most robust strategies.

3 comments:

cellprof said...

Nice structure for the scenario, might work!

cellprof said...

This is a practical technique. You can apply scenario planning to your working life- 1st identify the external structures that will shape your career, then work out which ones may change (the shift from analog to digital hit some people hard), etc.

WinWinWin said...

Interesting thing to try.
Thank you