🔮Strategy note #3: using AI to automate imagining the future with AI

Accelerating scenario planning and analysis to near-real-time

I do a lot of thinking about what the future(s) with AI might look like. In particular, with the technology advancing so rapidly around us in 2024 — and the rate of advancement speeding up, not slowing down.

One of the key tools I use in my day to day strategy and foresight work with organisations is Scenario Planning (helpful summary from Perplexity:)

“Scenario planning is a strategic management tool that helps organisations envision various possible futures and develop strategies to address them. This methodology is especially valuable in today's dynamic and uncertain business environment, where traditional forecasting methods may fall short. Here’s a detailed look at scenario planning for strategy:

Key Components of Scenario Planning

1. Identification of Critical Uncertainties

The first step in scenario planning involves identifying key uncertainties that could significantly impact the organization. These uncertainties are typically external factors beyond the organisation’s control, such as economic shifts, technological advancements, or geopolitical changes.

2. Building Scenarios

Once the critical uncertainties are identified, the next step is to create a set of plausible scenarios. These scenarios should represent diverse but realistic future landscapes, providing a framework for understanding potential challenges and opportunities.

3. Exploring Implications

Each scenario's implications on the organisation are then assessed. This involves considering how different factors might interact and influence the business, helping to identify potential risks and opportunities associated with each scenario.

4. Strategy Development

The final step is to develop strategies that are robust and flexible enough to thrive in various scenarios. This encourages adaptive thinking, prompting organisations to create dynamic strategies that can be adjusted as reality unfolds.”

Over the last couple of weekends I’ve been experimenting with building a scenario-generation tool which quickly enables me to envision potential AI futures - and the underlying drivers which would lead to them. Here’s the first prototype UX:

Claude helped me build this simple AI scenario generator web page with 7 “axes of uncertainty” in under 1 hour

In this note I’m going to outline how I’ve been using AI to (1) automate the process of generating scenarios to explore future AI developments, and (2) explore the implications of those scenarios for different types of organisations. Then (3) what the wider insights of this technique are for accelerating the strategy process generally.