<P> Scenarios planning starts by dividing our knowledge into two broad domains: (1) things we believe we know something about and (2) elements we consider uncertain or unknowable . The first component--trends--casts the past forward, recognizing that our world possesses considerable momentum and continuity . For example, we can safely make assumptions about demographic shifts and, perhaps, substitution effects for certain new technologies . The second component--true uncertainties--involve indeterminables such as future interest rates, outcomes of political elections, rates of innovation, fads and fashions in markets, and so on . The art of scenario planning lies in blending the known and the unknown into a limited number of internally consistent views of the future that span a very wide range of possibilities . In project management, this is called the cone of uncertainty . </P> <P> Numerous organizations have applied scenario planning to a broad range of issues, from relatively simple, tactical decisions to the complex process of strategic planning and vision building . The power of scenario planning for business was originally established by Royal Dutch / Shell, which has used scenarios since the early 1970s as part of a process for generating and evaluating its strategic options . Shell has been consistently better in its oil forecasts than other major oil companies, and saw the overcapacity in the tanker business and Europe's petrochemicals earlier than its competitors . The approach may have had more impact outside Shell than within, as many others firms and consultancies started to benefit as well from scenario planning . Scenario planning is as much art as science, and prone to a variety of traps (both in process and content) as enumerated by Paul J.H. Schoemaker . More recently scenario planning has been discussed as a tool to improve the strategic agility, by cognitively preparing not only multiple scenarios but also multiple consistent strategies . </P> <P> Most authors attribute the introduction of scenario planning to Herman Kahn through his work for the US Military in the 1950s at the RAND Corporation where he developed a technique of describing the future in stories as if written by people in the future . He adopted the term "scenarios" to describe these stories . In 1961 he founded the Hudson Institute where he expanded his scenario work to social forecasting and public policy . One of his most controversial uses of scenarios was to suggest that a nuclear war could be won . Though Kahn is often cited as the father of scenario planning, at the same time Kahn was developing his methods at RAND, Gaston Berger was developing similar methods at the Centre d'Etudes Prospectives which he founded in France . His method, which he named' La Prospective', was to develop normative scenarios of the future which were to be used as a guide in formulating public policy . During the mid-1960s various authors from the French and American institutions began to publish scenario planning concepts such as' La Prospective' by Berger in 1964 and' The Next Thirty - Three Years' by Kahn and Wiener in 1967 . By the 1970s scenario planning was in full swing with a number of institutions now established to provide support to business including the Hudson Foundation, the Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), and the SEMA Metra Consulting Group in France . Several large companies also began to embrace scenario planning including DHL Express, Dutch Royal Shell and General Electric . </P> <P> Possibly as a result of these very sophisticated approaches, and of the difficult techniques they employed (which usually demanded the resources of a central planning staff), scenarios earned a reputation for difficulty (and cost) in use . Even so, the theoretical importance of the use of alternative scenarios, to help address the uncertainty implicit in long - range forecasts, was dramatically underlined by the widespread confusion which followed the Oil Shock of 1973 . As a result, many of the larger organizations started to use the technique in one form or another . By 1983 Diffenbach reported that' alternate scenarios' were the third most popular technique for long - range forecasting--used by 68% of the large organizations he surveyed . </P>

Who is regarded as the father of the scenario method