Every strategy is a bet on the future. The question is whether you're betting blind or with informed judgement.
Scenario creation is the discipline of building plausible futures that help you test assumptions, identify risks, and make decisions with greater confidence. It sits at the heart of strategic foresight — connecting the signals you observe today to the choices you need to make tomorrow.
This guide walks you through a practical, step-by-step process for creating scenarios that actually inform strategy. Not academic exercises. Not creative fiction. Scenarios that sharpen your thinking and prepare your organisation for what's ahead.
Whether you're a corporate strategist, consultant, or leadership team member, you'll learn how to move from scattered uncertainties to coherent futures — and use them to stress-test your strategic options.
Scenario creation is the structured process of developing multiple, plausible descriptions of how the future might unfold. Unlike forecasts, scenarios don't predict. They explore.
A scenario is a narrative that describes a possible future state and — critically — the pathway that leads there. Good scenarios are:
Plausible: Grounded in observable trends and realistic causal logic Relevant: Connected to the strategic questions your organisation faces Challenging: Designed to stretch thinking beyond comfortable assumptions Distinct: Different enough from each other to reveal meaningful choices
Scenario creation differs from trend analysis or environmental scanning. Those activities gather signals. Scenario creation synthesises them into coherent futures you can reason about.
For example, a trend might be "rising energy costs." A scenario explores what happens if energy costs triple while renewable adoption stalls, and how that shapes your market, operations, and competitive position.
The goal isn't to identify which future is most likely. It's to understand how your strategy performs across a range of futures — and where it needs to adapt.
Strategy fails most often not from poor execution, but from poor assumptions about the environment. The world changes. Assumptions don't update themselves.
Without scenarios, strategic planning tends toward:
Overconfidence in a single view of the future Reactive scrambling when conditions shift Missed opportunities hiding in blind spots Plans that break under real-world uncertainty
Effective scenario creation builds strategic resilience. It surfaces hidden dependencies in your plans. It reveals the early warning signals you should monitor. And it creates shared language within your team for discussing futures that might otherwise feel too uncertain to address.
For consultants, scenarios transform client conversations. Instead of presenting a single recommendation, you can show how your advice holds across different futures — building credibility and demonstrating rigour.
For strategy leaders, scenarios provide a framework for ongoing adaptation. When the world shifts, you've already mapped the terrain.
Start with a clear strategic question. Scenarios need a focus, or they drift into abstraction.
Your focal question should be: Specific to your organisation or challenge Time-bound (typically 5-15 years out) Open-ended enough to allow multiple answers
Example focal questions: "How might our competitive landscape evolve by 2030?" "What could disrupt our core revenue model in the next decade?" "How might customer expectations in our sector change over seven years?"
Write your focal question down. Test it with stakeholders. A well-framed question makes every subsequent step clearer.
Tip: If your question is too broad ("What will the future look like?"), narrow it. If it's too narrow ("Will regulation X pass?"), broaden it.
Scenarios are built from evidence, not imagination. Before creating futures, you need to understand what's changing now.
Gather inputs from: Trend databases and foresight libraries Industry reports and expert analysis Internal data and frontline observations Cross-industry analogies and weak signals
Look for signals across multiple domains: technology, regulation, social behaviour, economics, environment. The most interesting scenarios often emerge from intersections.
Portage's Trend Reports can accelerate this step — gathering research targeted to your strategic challenges and synthesising key trends from multiple sources.
Tip: Pay attention to signals you instinctively dismiss. Discomfort often indicates blind spots.
Not all change is uncertain. Some trends are highly predictable (demographic shifts, for instance). Scenarios focus on the uncertainties that matter most.
Critical uncertainties are: High impact on your focal question Genuinely uncertain — reasonable people disagree on the outcome Largely outside your control
Create a list of 8-15 potential uncertainties, then prioritise. Use a 2x2 matrix with "Impact on focal question" on one axis and "Degree of uncertainty" on the other. Focus on the high-impact, high-uncertainty factors.
Examples of critical uncertainties: Speed of technological adoption in your industry Direction of regulatory policy Competitor strategy (entry, exit, disruption) Macroeconomic stability
The most common approach uses two critical uncertainties to create a 2x2 matrix. Each quadrant becomes a distinct scenario.
How to choose your two axes: Select uncertainties that are independent (not causally linked) Ensure each uncertainty has clearly differentiated endpoints Verify that all four combinations produce plausible, distinct futures
For example: Axis 1: Regulatory environment (restrictive ↔ permissive) Axis 2: Technology adoption (rapid ↔ slow)
This creates four scenarios: rapid adoption with restriction, rapid adoption with permission, slow adoption with restriction, slow adoption with permission.
Alternative frameworks: Three scenarios (optimistic, pessimistic, baseline) — simpler but less rigorous Four archetypes (growth, collapse, constraint, transformation) — useful for exploring extreme cases
Each scenario needs a narrative that brings it to life. This isn't creative writing for its own sake — it's about making the future tangible enough to reason about.
For each scenario, develop:
A memorable title — captures the essence (e.g., "The Regulated Frontier," "Fragmented Markets") A description of the end state — what does this world look like at your time horizon? The pathway — what sequence of events leads from today to this future? Key characteristics — how do customers, competitors, regulations, and technologies behave? Implications for your focal question — what does this mean for your strategic challenge?
Write 200-500 words per scenario. Enough detail to be useful, not so much that it becomes a novel.
Tip: Include specific, concrete details. "Customer expectations shift" is vague. "Customers expect 24-hour delivery and refuse to pay premiums" is actionable.
Scenarios improve through challenge. Before using them for strategic work, stress-test their quality.
Validation questions: Are the scenarios genuinely distinct, or do they blur together? Is each scenario internally consistent? Would knowledgeable stakeholders find each scenario plausible? Do the scenarios collectively cover the range of futures you care about? Are there obvious futures missing from your set?
Bring in diverse perspectives — people from different functions, seniorities, and backgrounds. The best scenarios survive scrutiny from sceptics.
Refine titles, narratives, and implications based on feedback. This is iterative work.
Scenarios only create value when they inform action. The final step connects your scenarios to strategy.
Application approaches:
Wind-tunnelling: Test your current strategy against each scenario. Where does it succeed? Where does it fail? Option identification: What strategic moves would position you well across multiple scenarios? Early warning indicators: What signals would tell you a particular scenario is emerging? Contingency planning: What would you do if Scenario X began to unfold?
Document your insights. Scenarios should generate a clear set of strategic implications, not just interesting narratives.
Portage's Scenario Generator supports this workflow — helping you model strategic impact and run stress tests linked to your board objectives.
A consulting firm facing AI disruption used scenarios to explore how client relationships might evolve. Their focal question: "How will enterprise clients buy and use professional advice in 2032?"
Their two axes: Client sophistication with AI (high ↔ low) and Regulatory complexity (increasing ↔ decreasing).
One scenario — "The Augmented Client" — explored a future where clients use AI to handle routine analysis, buying consulting only for novel strategic challenges. This revealed that their current offering (heavily weighted toward analysis) was vulnerable across multiple futures.
Outcome: The firm accelerated investment in facilitation capabilities and senior advisory services.
A mid-sized manufacturer used scenarios to prepare for supply chain uncertainty. Their critical uncertainties: Trade policy (protectionist ↔ open) and Automation costs (declining rapidly ↔ stable).
The "Reshoring Rush" scenario — protectionist policy combined with affordable automation — suggested significant opportunity for local production. But it also revealed that their current facilities couldn't scale quickly.
Outcome: They began planning for modular expansion capacity, rather than waiting for signals to become obvious.
An independent consultant used scenario work to differentiate her practice. Rather than presenting single recommendations, she walked clients through three scenarios and showed how her advice performed in each.
This approach built trust, demonstrated rigour, and made clients more confident in decisions that held across futures — not just the "expected" one.
Start with the decision, not the future. Scenarios are tools for strategy, not speculation. Keep your focal question visible throughout.
Resist the "most likely" trap. The goal isn't to identify the winning scenario. It's to understand how your strategy performs across plausible futures.
Make scenarios memorable. Titles, vivid details, and clear narratives help teams internalise and reference scenarios in ongoing work.
Include uncomfortable futures. If every scenario feels acceptable, you're not exploring enough of the uncertainty space.
Update, don't abandon. Scenarios aren't static documents. Review them annually or when major signals shift. Refresh narratives and implications.
Avoid scenario creep. Three to four scenarios is the practical maximum. More than that and teams lose the ability to hold them in mind.
Scenario creation is one component of a broader strategic foresight capability. Explore these related topics to deepen your practice:
What Is Strategic Foresight? A Practical Guide for Leaders — Understand how scenario creation fits within the broader foresight discipline.
Scenario Planning: A Complete Guide (With Examples) — Comprehensive coverage of scenario planning methodology, including organisational implementation.
Scenario Archetypes: Growth, Collapse, Constraint, Transformation — Learn common scenario patterns and when to apply them.
How to Facilitate a Scenario Workshop — Practical guidance for running effective scenario sessions with teams and clients.
Horizon Scanning vs Environmental Scanning: Key Differences — Clarify the distinction between scanning approaches that feed scenario work.
Return to pillar: Foresight & Scenario Planning: How Strategy Leaders Prepare for Change
The best way to learn scenario creation is to do it. Start with a strategic question that matters to you or your clients. Gather signals. Identify two critical uncertainties. Build four distinct futures.
If you want to accelerate the process, Portage's Scenario Generator can help you move from trend signals to structured scenarios — and then stress-test your strategy against them.
Generate your first scenario set →
Scenarios explore, they don't predict. The goal is strategic insight, not accurate forecasting.
Start with a clear focal question. Every scenario should connect to a real strategic decision.
Build from evidence. Good scenarios synthesise observable trends and signals, not pure imagination.
Focus on critical uncertainties. High-impact, genuinely uncertain factors drive the most useful scenarios.
Make them memorable and distinct. Scenarios that blur together or feel forgettable don't inform decisions.
Apply scenarios to action. Wind-tunnel your strategy, identify early warning signals, and develop contingency options.