Indicative Scenario Planning Projects

Project Descriptions

Part Two: Public Sector Projects

NASA Aeronautics: R&D Prioritization, New Organizational Challenges and Emerging Forces for Change. The Office of Aeronautics is charged with the responsibility to provide the technology capabilities and research infrastructure necessary to support the aeronautics industries as they develop and test new product concepts. NASA Aeronautics invents and develops high risk, high pay-off technologies to be employed in a ten to twenty year horizon. The scenarios we designed for NASA Aeronautics (ASTT Enterprise) in 1996 were a 30-year look at the future global transportation needs of consumers, businesses and government. The objective was to use the scenarios to help set priorities for technology research and transportation infrastructure development. The first project included the participation of customers and stakeholders in the scenario strategy workshops. The stakeholder community “operated” in the scenarios and suggested to NASA what they would need to be successful there. NASA then compiled a list of new technology projects to satisfy those distant needs. This became the heart of the Three Pillars and Ten Goals technology strategy policy for NASA Aeronautics.

In 1997, we updated the scenarios and applied them to management and organizational questions. This was one of our first applications of Platform Scenarios and altering the endstate details to focus on R&D Center organizational issues proved easy to do. With customized scenarios, NASA engaged in strategic planning with the goals of developing a completely new “business model” for how the R&D Centers operated – program management, customer relations, investment policies, human resource policy, and alliances and partnerships.

In 2001 NASA Aeronautics again approached us for support. This time we provided in-depth trend analysis on the future of aerospace traffic management. That work contributed to a white paper on future NASA initiatives to the new Bush Administration. NASA was granted control of that work and we are scheduled to begin a scenario project (launching form that research) in 2003. The 2003 project will also explore the combination of scenario planning and probabilistic systems dynamics modeling.

Back to Indicative Scenario Planning Projects Main Page