Scenario planning

I've been doing some thinking about strategic planning options for our institution. Right now, we do that work primarily through conversations regarding budgets and student learning outcomes. But in many ways, those conversations are too precise for this sort of long range thinking. We've been pondering "theme of the year" strategic narrative discussions, educational philosophy white papers, and a vastly expanded workshop format. Here's another idea, scenario planning, that the business world has being doing a lot of in recent years. Perhaps this connects to the "Black Swan" idea that it's difficult to forecast the big events just by extrapolating from current circumstances, so here we have a "non-rational" way of trying to ge at major trends and issues of importance.

http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?source=hptextfeature&story_id=12000755