Scenarios and University Planning

Published in Volume 12, No. 2, 01 October 2003

Full article

Maree Conway

Introduction

Scenario planning is a well developed foresight methodology that is used by governments and business organisations across the world. Scenario planning provides an opportunity for these organisations to consider their future by developing a clearer understanding of the drivers of change that will affect their business in 10, 20 or 50 years.

When Swinburne decided in 1999 that it would “do” foresight, scenario planning was chosen as the first methodology to be implemented organisation-wide. As all good planners do, we did some desktop research, trying to find other universities across the world who had (i) used scenario planning; and (ii) used scenarios to inform planning within a broader foresight framework. A lot of time was spent trying to identify institutions from which we could learn, but after about six months, we realised that we were going to have to write the rule-book for universities ourselves.

This paper has been written as an aid to those university planners wanting to find out more scenario planning and how it might be used in university planning. It is not intended to be a “how-to” guide, since there are many more effective books and resources for this purpose. The paper is intended to share learnings from published experience to help other planners who think they might like to use this methodology to strengthen their strategy development.