Steering Clear of Utopia & Dystopia: How to Craft Plausible Binary Scenarios
What pitfalls should you avoid when creating two scenarios, and how can you ensure that neither scenario is viewed as a utopia or dystopia?
Scenario planning is a strategic tool used by organizations to anticipate and prepare for future events by considering a range of possible scenarios. By analysing a variety of possible futures, businesses can develop strategies that are flexible and adaptable to changes in the environment.
Most futurists often work with 4 scenarios divided into a 2x2 scenario matrix. But a question I get often is:
Does it makes sense to work with just two scenarios?
Short answer: It does. And we often do work with two scenarios (also known as polarities) when we want to assess the future of a specific issue, what we call an uncertainty. This could be the future of data sharing: Will we see increased collection and aggregation of data or will we see an increased focus on privacy and selectiveness?
However, there are some pitfalls to avoid when dealing with a binary scenario approach. Binary scenario means that we create two distinct and opposite scenarios as a way of exploring potential outcomes and managing uncertainty. These scenarios often fall into the trap of an utopia/dystopia duality, where one scenario is portrayed as ideal while the other is portrayed as disastrous. Utopias and dystopias might be useful for storytelling, but they are not good guides for strategic planning.
This approach is highly subjective and may not reflect the reality of the future. A way to avoid this pitfall is to build the scenarios around a fundamental critical uncertainty. For example, a fundamental critical uncertainty could be whether technological development accelerates or moves at a more conservative speed.
Utopias and dystopias might be useful for storytelling, but they are not good guides for strategic planning.
I recently did this for a client within urban development, creating the two scenarios “Full Steam Ahead’ and “Treading Carefully”. to illustrate how to steer clear of utopian and dystopian extremes.
The Full Steam Ahead scenario depicts a world where urban dwellers trade privacy for convenience in pursuit of efficiency gains and seamless services in the city. The scenario also portrays large-scale investment in infrastructure adaption and the standardization of technology protocols across public and private actors. The ability to access, communicate with, and contribute to the right protocols and platforms is essential for commercial players to carve out a role in ecosystems. A wave of automation has washed over society, e.g. within mobility, which is dominated by fleets of electric and semi-autonomous vehicles. The scenario also includes an integrated technology part in new and retrofitted buildings, which host an interconnected web of sensors monitoring air quality, heating, and lighting to ensure wellbeing and efficient energy flows. Infrastructure tracks traffic flows, noise, weather patterns and pollution. The scenario also includes a rise in sustainability, where low energy consumption and emissions are paramount for new construction and retrofitting of existing structures.
In the Treading Carefully scenario, we are in a world where rising concerns about data privacy and cybersecurity have significantly reduced the power of the tech giants and slowed the adoption of new technologies and integrated services. The scenario includes citizens gaining ownership of and better control over their data enabled by blockchain technology. Limited data sharing and semi-anonymization of individuals make it hard to aggregate and access large amounts of data to support previous virtuous, as well as vicious, circles of data harvesting and analysis and the derived customization of offerings. Power struggles are taking place between those who want to control the digital infrastructure, a war officiated by the city government. This struggle has left urban mobility rather fragmented, as different transportation modes are poorly integrated. Automation has been rolled out in some heavy industries but not in the service industry, where many people are employed.
Both scenarios present plausible futures and revolve around critical uncertainties (highly uncertain, highly impactful issues) for the future of urban development. By focusing on one fundamental critical uncertainty, plausibly arguing for how we got there and looking into our assumptions, we can better avoid the utopia/dystopia duality and consider what’s plausible, not what’s preferable.
This approach enables organisations to prepare for multiple scenarios, regardless of whether technological development accelerates or moves at a more conservative speed. In this way, you can avoid falling into the trap of having to focus on a perceived ‘good’ and ‘bad’ scenario, where there is a natural tendency to focus more on the positive than the uncomfortable.
Key takeaways
- When creating two scenarios, it’s important to avoid the utopia/dystopia duality trap, where one scenario is portrayed as ideal while the other is portrayed as disastrous.
- One way to avoid this pitfall is to build the scenarios around a fundamental critical uncertainty and a couple of other change dynamics, rather than trying to make the scenarios as opposite and extreme as possible.
- Focusing on one critical uncertainty and considering its plausible outcomes enables organizations to avoid the trap of having to focus on a perceived ‘good’ and ‘bad’ scenario, which can lead to biased or unrealistic planning.
Note: The relationship between utopias and dystopias often risk being dialectic. Basically meaning that utopian visions (idealised, perfect worlds) and dystopian visions (nightmarish, apocalyptic worlds) are two sides of the same coin, and that they are often intertwined. This means that in the pursuit of an idealised vision, unintended negative consequences can arise, leading to a dystopian reality. The dialectic suggests that these two opposing concepts are not mutually exclusive, and that striving for a utopian vision may lead to dystopian outcomes.
