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Much of the scenario-based planning work that is observed fails to account for the web of belief systems that powerfully shape the ways that future conditions and trends are created and acted upon. This paper aims to address this issue.

The authors show how understanding narratives – people’s beliefs, attitudes and perceptions and the stories, images, anecdotes and aphorisms used to articulate them – provides planners and leaders an exceptional ability to anticipate with confidence the actions that can drive the real world toward one scenario or another.

The process of scenario planning, when it is infused with identification and analysis of relevant narratives, can produce potent insights.

From a scenario planning perspective, narratives are not trends as we typically define them, but rather they provide the emotional context by which individuals and groups evaluate and internalize trends and other forces at play in the environment.

As scenarios are used in practice over time, their methodology is evolving. Bringing the analysis of narratives – the deep-seated beliefs and belief systems of organizational, national, and other cultures – into the art and science of scenario planning is a step in that evolution.

To further a dialog about the future of opportunities in America, this exercise imagines what life would be like in four alternative possibilities, or scenarios, emerging from now to the year 2035.

The logical basis for these four possible futures is that technological, political, economic and social factors – and the decisions of voters and their leaders–will result in either many or few opportunities which will be available to many or few players.

The central question is what scenario do we really want to live in and what decisions need to be taken to increase its likelihood of occurring? Conversely, which future is the most undesirable and what can we do to prevent it?

The scenarios illuminate the choices that need to be explored now to better anticipate and react to the challenges of the future.

By selecting just two ranges of conditions–opportunity and participation–the author is able to imagine futures that have elements of utopia and dystopia.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

Examines Laughlin Currie's experiences in helping to implement the New Deal, a new monetary system of Roosevelt's administration implemented during the 1930s.