14 Chapter 1 As demand for RBC and Ig products have changed, it highlights the need for organizations to cultivate awareness regarding future uncertainties and create preparedness plans. This need could be assessed using scenario planning methodology. 1.4 Brief History of Scenario Planning or Scenario Development Modern-day scenario planning (also known as scenario development) has origins in two schools of thought from the United States and France in the 1950s-1960s.20 Herman Kahn created scenarios for the U.S. military while his French counterpart, Gaston Berger, created prospective thinking (La Prospective) which was later carried on by Pierre Masse and Bertrand de Jouvenel.20 Scenario planning came to the limelight in the 1970s when Pierre Wack and Ted Newland of the Royal Dutch/Shell Company employed and redefined scenario planning methodology to find scenarios that were plausible (i.e., valid, likely, or acceptable) instead of probable (i.e., likely to happen).21 Wack criticized how forecasting techniques were merely extensions of the past or present and emphasized that one needed to embrace uncertainty, try to understand it, and incorporate it into reasoning. Under his direction, his team created multiple memorable storylines (i.e., scenarios) that invited disruptions and uncertainties while remaining relevant to management. These scenarios were not predictions of what could happen but an invitation into a future world for participants to imagine themselves as actors in and a reflect upon their human assumptions of how that world would work.21,22 Hence, what was important was not the specific details of the future, but the plausibility of the storylines and how it could open the mind up to new dynamics.21–23 Using scenario planning, Shell survived the oil and price crises in the 1970s. As Shell’s corporate fame in using this technique spread, many other organizations and fields adopted it. Over the years, it has been used in many private and public sectors, including corporate businesses, the military, public policy, transportation, energy, education, and academia.20,24 While there are different schools of scenario planning, it is generally agreed that scenario planning is a “structured and analytical process to create characterization of multiple futures to enable stakeholders to rethink strategic decisions and policies” (Bouhalleb and Smida, p. 2).25,26 The core steps of scenario planning are:25 1. The preparatory phase, where the focal issue is defined, and the trends and principal drivers of change are identified;
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