1. Learning from the Future
Agility and the Next-Generation Organisation
Paul Louis Iske
Professor Open Innovation & Business Venturing, Maastricht University
Chief Dialogues Officer ABN AMRO Bank

2. The world is complex
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3. The Innovator’s Dilemma
Established technology
Performance
Mainstream customer needs
!CRISIS !
Invasive Technology
Niche customer needs
Clayton Christensen: The Innovator’s Dilemma
Time
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7. Agile or Trapped in Patterns?
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9. Creativity
Being multiparadigmatic:
flexibly moving between,
combining and integrating
diverse ideas, perspectives,
intelligences and paradigms
PO
=
Provocative Operation
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10. Increasing the Creativity Score
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11. Perspectives
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12. Paradigm Shifts
A Paradigm shift is a change in the basic
assumptions within the ruling theory of science
Thomas Kuhn (1962)
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13. key value customer
activities proposition relationships
key customer
partners segments
cost revenue
structure key streams
resources channels
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images by JAM

14. • Client = Employee  Co-creation (Key Resources, Channels)
• Competitor = Colleague  Open Innovation
• Stranger = Strategic Partner  Combinatoric Innovation
• Crisis = Opportunity  Restructuring
• Succes = Danger  Disruptive Innovation
• Change = Fun  Fashion
• Knowledge = Commodity  Rising Knowledge Economies
• Valuable = Free  Free Content (Revenu Streams)
• Client = Account Manager  Qiy (Customer Relationships)
• Authority = Powerless  Publishers (Knowledge Resources)
• Best Practices = Worst Practices  Land Lines
• Money & Sustainability = Good pair  Green Energy
• IP = Outdated  Open Source
• Diversity = Asset  Ideo
• Certainties = Fake  Portfolio Management
• Risk = Attractive  Insurances
• Poor = Rich  Bottom of Pyramid (Customer Segment, Cost Structure)
• Small = Big  Crowfunding (Cost Structure)
• Play = Serious  LEGO Serious Play (Customer Segment)
• Failure = Blessing  Brilliant Failures
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15. “WHAT IF?”
AN INTRODUCTION TO
SCENARIO THINKING
Navigating in a complex
world
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16. What are Scenarios?
• Scenarios are possible views of the world,
described in narrative form (stories) that
provide a context in which managers can
make decisions.
• By seeing a range of possible worlds,
decisions will be better informed, and a
strategy based on this knowledge and
insight will be more likely to succeed.
• Scenarios do not predict the future, but
they do illuminate the drivers of change:
understanding them can only help
managers to take greater control of their
situation.
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Gill Ringland

17. Scenario Planning - History
• Use in strategic planning has evolved
from military applications
• Theoretical foundations developed in
the 1970s and early 80s – complex
theoretical models seen as expensive
and impractical beyond academic use
• Royal Dutch Shell popularized
scenario planning - petroleum crisis
in 1973.
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18. Guidelines
• Long View – day-to-day work is
usually driven by near-term
concerns and urgent needs –
scenario thinking requires looking
beyond immediate demands and
peering far enough into the future
to see new possibilities – asking
“what if……”
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19. Guidelines
• Outside-In Thinking – most think
from the inside, the things they
control, out to the world they would
like to shape. Conversely, thinking
from the outside-in begins with
pondering external changes that
might, over time, profoundly affect
your work.
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20. Guidelines
• Multiple Perspectives – the introduction
of multiple perspectives, different from
managing multiple stakeholders – is
based on diverse voices that shed new
light on strategic challenges, helps to
better understand one’s own
assumptions, and exposes new ideas
that inform perspective and help to see
the big picture of an issue or idea.
Global Business Network
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21. Types of Futures
• Possible - “might” happen (future knowledge)
• Plausible – “could” happen (current knowledge)
• Probable - “likely to” happen (current trends)
• Preferable - “want to” happen (value judgements)
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22. Types of Futures
“Wildcard” Possible
Scenario
Plausible
Probable
Preferable
Today
Time
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23. The Scenario Planning Process
• Identify the focal question
• Environmental scanning – internal and
external
• Selecting drivers of change and ranking
• Building the scenario matrix
• Developing the scenarios
• Presenting the scenarios
• Considering the strategic implications
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24. The Scenario Planning Process
• Identify the focal question
• Environmental scanning – internal and
external
• Selecting drivers of change and ranking
• Building the scenario matrix
• Developing the scenarios
• Presenting the scenarios
• Considering the strategic implications
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25. The Focal Question
• Identify a focal area or issue – such as a decision or question
that is critical to the future of your organisation now.
• Useful foci often emerge from major challenges of today”
• Choose a “horizon year” as the distance into the future that
the scenarios will extend (beyond the typical time scale of
your organisation):
– allows suspension of disbelief (the “that won’t happen”
reaction);
– will you be in the same position you are in today in 10 years?
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26. The Scenario Planning Process
• Identify the focal question
• Environmental scanning – internal and
external
• Selecting drivers of change and ranking
• Building the scenario matrix
• Developing the scenarios
• Presenting the scenarios
• Considering the strategic implications
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27. Major Drivers of Change
• Social
• Technological
• Economic
• Environmental
• Political
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28. The Scenario Planning Process
• Identify the focal question
• Environmental scanning – internal and
external
• Selecting drivers of change and ranking
• Building the scenario matrix
• Developing the scenarios
• Presenting the scenarios
• Considering the strategic implications
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29. What is “Uncertainty”?
• “Low” means we are reasonably certain
that it will play out or continue in ways
that are fairly well understood
– eg. population
• “High” means that we have no clear idea
which of a number of plausible ways it
might go
– eg. government legislation and policy
• “Mod” means “somewhere in between”
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30. The Scenario Planning Process
• Identify the focal question
• Environmental scanning – internal and
external
• Selecting drivers of change and ranking
• Building the scenario matrix
• Developing the scenarios
• Presenting the scenarios
• Considering the strategic implications
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31. Impact-Uncertainty Classification
Critical Important Critical
High Planning Scenario Scenario
I Issues Drivers Drivers
m
p Important Important Important
Mod Planning Planning Scenario
a Issues Issues Drivers
c
Monitor &
t Low
Monitor Monitor
re-assess
Low Moderate High
Uncertainty
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32. The Scenario Planning Process
• Identify the focal question
• Environmental scanning – internal and
external
• Selecting drivers of change and ranking
• Building the scenario matrix
• Developing the scenarios
• Presenting the scenarios
• Considering the strategic implications
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33. Developing & Presenting the
Scenarios
• In this step, we ‘flesh out’ each world.
The requirements for this step are to
suspend disbelief, trust your intuition, look
for plausibility, surprises and novel
elements.
• Scenarios must be internally consistent
and plausible – they have to make sense
to the people creating them, and to the
people in the organisation who will read
them.
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34. Example
Scenario
Visualization
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35. Example
Scenario
Visualization
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36. Example
Scenario
Visualization
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37. A Bank with ideas
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38. Scenario’s for a country
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39. Developments in Healthcare system
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40. Learning from the Future Amsterdam, May 22, 2012 45

41. Scenario’s in Education
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42. Flesh out of a Scenario
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43. Three hard truths
An era of fundamental transitions:
• Rising global energy demand
• Supply will struggle to keep pace
• Unsustainable CO levels in atmosphere
2
DEMAND SUPPLY CO2
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44. Shell choose only one uncertainty driver
Critical Uncertainty
Will society act reactive or proactive?
Reactive Proactive
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45. Two energy scenarios
Scramble
• A more reactive approach:
– Events outpace action
– CO emissions not
2
addressed until major
climate events experienced
at local levels SCRAMBLE
Blueprints
• A proactive approach:
– Action outpacing events
– Global policy framework
and price on CO emissions
2
BLUEPRINTS
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46. The Scenario Planning Process
• Identify the focal question
• Environmental scanning – internal and
external
• Selecting drivers of change and ranking
• Building the scenario matrix
• Developing the scenarios
• Presenting the scenarios
• Considering the strategic implications
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47. From Scenarios to Strategy
• The Scenarios are not the only purpose
of the exercise!
– the resulting “freeing up” of thinking while
creating them is!
• Expanding understanding of what options
might be available in the long term:
– shifts frame of reference 10-20 years out.
– examining implications for the services
provided by your organisation in each of the
scenario worlds
– looking to see what your organisation would
need to do to stay viable
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48. Using Scenario Outputs
• Does your organisation’s existing strategy
stand up to all of the future worlds
presented in these scenarios?
• What rationale would you have for pursuing
various strategic options in each scenario?
What can you influence?
• What early indicators will we monitor?
• After considering the strategic implications
of the scenarios, what actions might we
recommend?
• Deciding on an implementation plan.
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49. Manifest Next Generation Bank: inspiratie tot nadenken
Zorgt voor schaalbare menselijkheid
Eerst vertrouwen én verantwoordelijkheid delen met
klanten en medewerkers, daarna pas vertrouwen en
verantwoordelijkheid oogsten.
Faciliteert een customer-managed relationship
Van een klantgerichte naar een
klantgestuurde organisatie.
Matcht technologische met sociale innovatie
Slimmer gebruik maken van intellectueel kapitaal: uit onderzoek van de Erasmus
Universiteit blijkt dat het succes van innovatie slechts voor 25% wordt bepaald door
investeringen in R&D; voor de overige 75% is innovatie afhankelijk van factoren op het
gebied van mens en organisatie.
Is een ethisch bedrijf
Ze weet dat mensen en organisaties elkaar uitkiezen omdat hun relatie waarde creëert door
aan te sluiten bij wat die mensen zoeken.
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50. Your turn…
• Identify a key issue for ABN AMRO and the
most important but uncertain drivers of
change.
• Plot them on your impact-uncertainty
matrix.
• Pick two from the upper right hand corner
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51. Example Building the Scenario Matrix
Choose two drivers that are most
uncertain and most critical in terms of
impact on the chosen ABN AMRO key issue.
Critical Uncertainty 1
Critical Uncertainty 2
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52. Building the Scenario Matrix
Critical Uncertainty 1
World 2 World 1
Critical
Uncertainty 2
World 3 World 4
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53. Thank you!
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