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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.

The purpose of this paper is to undertake a critical consideration of the role of scenarios as prospective sensemaking devices through the dual theoretical perspectives of social constructionism and narrative.

The scholarly literature in the fields of strategy and scenario thinking, sensemaking, social construction and narrative are analysed and critically discussed, with their major contributions to the debate identified.

The main findings suggest that transformational change is observed to occur through inductive strategizing at the organization's periphery, in contrast with deductive strategy making at its centre. This causes one to question one's understanding of the strategist as a rational planner. An alternative perception of the strategist as interpretive bricoleur is offered. Adopting a scenario outlook and developing the capacities that comprise sensemaking are said to enhance the abilities of the inductive strategist. Through this, managers are more open to the unexpected and are able to construct meaning from uncertainty and ambiguity, laying the foundations for transformational strategizing. Originality/value – This paper is of value to both practitioners and scholars. For those involved in practical scenario construction it proposes a refocusing of scenarios from influencing managers’ decision making to enhancing their sensemaking capacities. For scholars, it supports and joins the call for strategy researchers to focus on how strategy in organisations is constructed and offers conceptual pointers on what may prove fruitful avenues to pursue. The paper concludes by proposing that through prospective sensemaking individuals can construct meaningful interpretations of their socially constructed worlds.

Due to the limitations of conventional urban planning, it is essential to develop novel techniques of urban futruing. This paper aimed to use the scenario technique to create four plausible narratives of the future of Isfahan. Also, the authors described the problems of city foresight in the Global South.

This paper chronicles the Schwartzian steps taken to build explorative scenarios of Isfahan City in Iran in 2040. After using a STEEPV (Social, Technological, Environmental, Economic, Political, Value) analysis, the authors prioritized the collected variables by combining influence diagrams, the iceberg metaphor and an expert-based survey. Once the key uncertainties were derived, four scenarios were developed and discussed.

Through thematic analysis of the official visions of Isfahan’s future and the juxtaposition of these narratives with insight yielded in the scenario-development process, the paper concludes that the Northernness of the prevailing urban imaginaries, uncritical mimetic benchmarking, depoliticization of urban futures and the decorative reductionistic visions colonize urban futures in Isfahan/Iran. Critical/deconstructive city foresight and application of discomfort/ignorance criteria in the generation of scenarios can improve the rigor and quality of city foresight in the Global South.

The application of city foresight in the Global South has been limited. The paper is a step toward bridging this gap and providing some recommendations on how city foresight in the Global South might differ from its counterparts in the Global North.

The purpose of this paper is to formally introduce the future persona, a futures method to let scenarios come to life. A future persona is a scenario-specific fictional individual living in the future scenario (s)he is meant to depict. The paper provides a formal, systematic and clear step-by-step guide on how to create engaging and effective future personas after a scenario planning exercise.

After having introduced the future persona method, tracing it back to the customer persona method in user centered design (UCD) and differentiating it from previous uses of futures characters in the futures studies literature and in other domains, an example of the creation process of four future personas based on four scenario archetypes of the futures of work is provided, illustrated with pictures and discussed.

Future personas, with their narratives and graphical illustrations, are found to be particularly useful to convey scenarios to a target audience.

Futures personas can be used in a scenario planning exercise to increase the clarity of scenarios in the mind of scenario planners and to let scenarios be known inside an organization.

Future personas can substantially enrich scenarios, increasing their liveliness, playfulness and empathy.

The use of socio-economic scenarios in small island developing states (SIDS) when assessing, and planning for, the impacts of global changes on national socioeconomic and environmental systems is still in its infancy. The research conducts a cross-scale foresight scenario exercise to produce regional scenarios and national storylines for Caribbean islands that are of “partial” consistency to the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and representative concentration pathways (RCPs) and shows how future socioeconomic and climatic changes can be applied to inform natural resource management decisions.

To develop the scenarios, the study uses a three-staged linking process using mixed methods to “triangulate” each technique to compensate for weaknesses of one method by introducing a complementary method at each stage. A participatory-expert stepwise approach with feedback loops is used and complemented with a climate sensitive tourism water demand model.

Four regional exploratory socio-economic scenarios were constructed that are partially consistent with global scenarios. In addition, national storylines for four island states were developed based on the regional scenarios. Using RCP 4.5 hotel water demand in Barbados is estimated under three of the regional scenarios based on compatibility. The results indicate there is a 17% difference between the highest and lowest estimated water demand, indicating the effect of varying socio-economic conditions on water demand.

The paper contributes to the literature by presenting regional socio-economic scenarios, specifically for SIDS, that are partially consistent with both global climatic RCPs and SSPs using a cross-scale approach. The scenarios are then used to demonstrate how future socio-economic pathways impact on freshwater demand.

By drawing on current reports, this paper positions that Homo sapiens could in the near future be faced with an increasingly uninhabitable planet. It emphasises the importance of adventure tourism and its associated activities as a means of supporting individuals to develop more outdoor survival skills.

This study applies a scenario narrative approach in exploring and presenting potential future ideas. The significance of narratives lies at the essential examination of current trends and drivers that could be shaping future scenarios. This paper, through the exploration of past and current trends supports the researcher in presenting future views. The scenario narratives in this research are established via desk-based research and inspection of academic journals, industry reports, ideas and knowledge.

If society is pushed to the brink of extinction due to a catastrophic event(s), people will require survival skills, similar to those shared by our hunter-gather nomad ancestor. Thus, this paper highlights the value and importance of the industry in encouraging soft and hard outdoor adventure in the coming years. It recognises how different adventure travel activities can support people in rekindling with our more basic instincts and ultimately, surviving in different natural environments.

This paper offers original theoretical knowledge within the adventure tourism literature. Offering original consideration to the value of exploring the past as a method of understanding the future, the paper presents an original spectrum of soft and hard skills-based adventure tourism activities.

The purpose of this study is to propose an innovative and efficient process in urban policy-making that combines a divergent and creative method with a convergent and strategic one. At the same time, the purpose is also to propose a useful innovation to enforce the usability of both methods. On the one hand, mission-oriented policies run the risk of being overly focused on the present and of not being able to develop preparedness in organization. On the other hand, scenario development has the reverse problem it often does not point out how to use scenario narratives to inform and devise short-term strategic actions.

The paper proposes an innovative methodological approach, the mission-oriented scenarios, which hybridizes Mazzucato's mission-oriented public policy framework with Jim Dator's Manoa school four futures method. The proposed methodological innovation emerges from a urban foresight academic-led project carried out in the context of the Metropolitan City of Turin, Italy, where a first application of the mission-oriented scenarios was tested on six different focal issues (from reindustrialization to cultural policies) and the scenario narratives were used as sources for the grounding of 12 missions and 48 strategic actions towards 2030.

Mission-oriented scenarios can contribute to the generation of more sustainable and inclusive urban public policies. This methodological proposal is based on an original mix of knowledge exchange procedures borrowed from methodological approaches with different backgrounds: the mission-oriented and the archetypal scenarios. Their conjunction could support the formulation of ambitious yet pragmatic policies, giving a plurality of actors the opportunity to act and establish fruitful and lasting partnerships.

The paper reconstructs one of the first urban foresight projects carried out in a major Italian city by two prestigious universities and exposes a methodological innovation resulting from reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the project, which opens the door to the development of a new scenario technique.

This paper aims to address the potential of hunting humans as sport tourism activity in the twenty-second century. The paper explores past and current trends related to sport hunting, animal extinction, human violence and the normalisation of violence via fictional media. This paper paints a provocative picture of society with the aim of encouraging dialogue across the wider community regarding the challenges facing society in relation to practices related to sport hunting and tourism.

This paper takes a scenario narrative approach in presenting potential discussion on the future of sport hunting as a tourism activity. The importance of narrative writing as a method to research is its ability in telling a story to the reader. By embracing diverse philosophical methods, this research draws on past and current trends via secondary data sources to justify the future scenario narrative.

This paper presents interesting insights into the future of sport hunting and its potential relationship to tourism. However, considering the following quote, “Yet another uncertainty is that predictions themselves can alter the future – which, of course, is part of the motivation behind futurism” (Larson, 2002, p. 5), this paper concludes with a sobering message, if previous research as well as the ideas presented here are to become a future reality, one where humans hunt each other for sport, are we content to allow this to happen? Or do we want to encourage debate to ensure we create better futures?

This paper offers original and novel research within the sport-tourism literature by taking a futures perspective and applying a scenario narrative approach. The paper offers original insight into attitudes towards sport hunting and its future potential, moving away from its traditions of hunting animals to hunting humans. This paper encourages debate around a taboo-subject, by drawing on a popular past-time, sport. Death is also universal, and by aligning the topic with sport and as a hunting activity, this paper is offering original approaches to addressing difficult questions that need to be asked.

The purpose of this paper is to offer original ideas into a potential future cannabis industry in the UK. This paper presents novel approaches regarding the potential existence of cannabis for the tourism industry. It presents an idea in which the UK Government could produce, distribute and control the industry. The proposed idea presents a scheme in which the UK could encourage regional tourism (inclusive to domestic and international travellers) through a controlled but innovative cannabis market scheme. This paper presents a future scenario aiming to encourage dialogue and critique, at a time when attitudes to cannabis are changing.

This research takes a scenario narrative approach in presenting and exploring a potential future cannabis market in the UK. The importance of narrative writing as a method is recognised by Lindgren and Bandhold (2009), who identify the significance in telling a story to the reader. Taking a pragmatic approach, embracing diverse philosophical methods, this research explores past and current trends via a mixture of secondary data sources to create and present a scenario narrative of the future.

This paper identified that trends in legalising cannabis for cultivation, medical and recreational purposes continue to become more liberal globally. However, cannabis laws mainly focus on the use for residents. Consequently, domestic tourism markets have the potential to grow. However, there is limited consideration regarding the potential for international tourism cannabis markets. Thus, the findings of this research are based on the potential for the UK to implement and promote a cannabis industry for international travellers.

This paper offers original ideas in exploring a future cannabis market in the UK, one where regional tourism is considered. The paper presents a novel approach that encourages domestic and international tourists to engage with the cannabis industry by navigating a well-managed, local approach to supplying cannabis in the UK.