The term strategy has been misused and even abused.
Worse, the word scenario is often confused with strategy
to the point that clarification is needed if we are to
understand one another. As a prolongation of the work
done by the Rand Corporation in the 1960s, strategic
planning, management and prospective approaches have
been developed to help organizations master change. Over
the past 25 years, we have contributed by creating or
further developing various methodologies and procedures
such as the Mactor and MICMAC methods for use in
scenario building. These tools are doubly powerful in
that they stimulate the imagination, reduce collective
biases, and promote appropriation. One of the main
functions of the strategic futures exercise is to
eliminate two errors that we usually describe as the
“hammer’s risk” and the “nail’s dream.” In other words,
we forget what a hammer’s function is when staring at a
nail (the nail’s dream) or we know how to use a hammer
and imagine that every problem is like a nail (the
hammer’s risk). In our case, we strive to give simple
tools that may be appropriated. However, these simple
tools are inspired by intellectual rigor that enables
one to ask the right questions. Of course, these tools
do not come with a guarantee. The natural talent, common
sense, and intuition of the futurist also count! pdf