Seminar Nine Scenario Planning and Case Study

In this seminar, we focused mainly on the scenario planning method from a case-based perspective.

In the scenario about education, there are three key factors: market, knowledge base, and political requirement. As an education provider (polytechnics, universities, etc), our market is the recruiting companies and agencies. By properly sensing the need of talents and skills, we can modify the knowledge base of education. Since education is always in the social circumstances, we should consider the political issues all the time.

In the scenario about technology, the three factors change a bit: market, technology and political requirement. Here I want to elaborate only the political part. For new technology and issues raised by it to be legalized, the period of time is at least one year. It is reasonable for us to generalize that the legalization is always far behind new technology. This means it is not a good idea to solve potential problem after the born of new tech. Instead, there will be some suitable and foreseeing political requirements for new tech to follow. As a new tech provider or consumer, we need to consider these requirements very carefully.

From the search results of Scenario Analysis online, I found an interesting technique based on computing: Visualization of Scenarios, or Morphological Analysis.

Morphological Analysis
Morphological analysis (MA) is a non-quantified modelling method for structuring and analysing technical,organisational and social problem complexes. It is well suited for developing scenarios, and the method is highly appropriate for complex cases where expertise from several areas is required. It is also useful for developing and relating operational and tactical scenarios to force requirements. Using MA for scenario generation and strategy management typically involves workshop sessions supported by computer applications.

Process-data Model of MA This section presents the process-data model explaining the generic concepts and the activities involved in morphological analysis methods, as shown by figure below.



The left figure shows the meta-process model, which is the representation of the activities involved in performing morphological analysis. These activities are explained in more depth in section 2. On the right hand of the figure you see the meta-data model of morphological analysis, which is the presentation of the data that are produced by the activities of the method. Each of these data or concepts is detailed in section 3. The dashed lines in between the two models indicate the relationship between the activities and the produced data. An example of Morphological Analysis project to clarify the application of Morphological Analysis’activities is then presented in section 4. The aim of this example is to perform analysis and explore the possibilities to grow a start up company.

I think this seminar will improve our skill in case study and scenario analyzing, and thus is quite helpful for the final exam. ^_^