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To address lessons that specify the impact and contribution of current scenario methods when focused on facilitating transition management processes.

Comparative literature review based on transition management and scenario development.

Need of further systemic thought about the required criteria of transition scenarios and the embedding of scenario use in transition management processes.

Processes of transition management are in need of transition specific scenarios.

Because transition management implies a complex and long‐term steering paradigm with which current scenario applications are not familiar, conclusions are drawn on the (changing) requirements of scenario development processes in transition management and on the need to innovate current scenario methods in the context of transition management.

Energy scenarios have long been successfully used to inform decision-making in energy systems planning, with a wide range of different methodological approaches for developing and evaluating them. The purpose of this study is to analyze the existing approaches and classify them with a morphological box.

This paper builds upon the methodological literature on developing and evaluating energy scenarios and presents a morphological box, which comprises parameters describing the scenario properties, (energy system) model properties, scientific practice and institutional settings of energy scenarios. The newly developed morphological box is applied to four selected energy scenarios of the German energy transition.

The morphological box is a suitable tool to classify current energy scenarios. The exemplary application also points toward four challenges in the current practice of energy scenario development and evaluation: increasing complexity of decision problems, transparency of the scenario development process, transparency of the decision support process and communication of uncertainty.

The morphological box of energy scenarios helps researchers soundly document and present their methodological approaches for energy scenario development and evaluation. It also facilitates the work of analysts who want to classify, interpret and compare energy scenarios from a methodological perspective. Finally, it supports the identification of gaps between current practice and the methodological literature on energy scenarios, leading to the development of new types of energy scenarios.

The paper aims to review all the techniques for developing scenarios that have appeared in the literature, along with comments on their utility, strengths and weaknesses.

The study was carried out through an electronic search using internet search engines and online databases and indexes.

The paper finds eight categories of techniques that include a total of 23 variations used to develop scenarios. There are descriptions and evaluations for each.

Futurists can use this list to broaden their repertoire of scenario techniques.

Scenario development is the stock‐in‐trade of futures studies, but no catalog of the techniques used has yet been published. This list is the start at developing a consensus list of techniques that can be refined as the field matures.

Scenario development has traditionally been an outward looking process designed to enhance awareness of potential change in the external business environment. A set of techniques is presented here for bringing the business and its internal issues directly into the scenario development effort from the beginning. By casting strategies as scenarios, companies can gain many of the benefits of traditional scenario planning while accelerating the strategic decision making for organizations in high change environments.

In the case of Iran, about 19 years have passed since the announcement of general energy policies. Policies adopted in the past included too many approaches and goals for the energy sector that some of them are in conflict with each other and their simultaneous implementation was impossible. Therefore, many of the expected goals of these policies have not been achieved. It is very important to adopt an appropriate approach that is compatible with the country’s characteristics and can steer energy policies. Therefore, this study aims to adopt an appropriate approach for the country’s energy sector according to the conditions and needs of the country.

A participatory scenario technique is designed and used to develop plausible projections in the case of Iran’s energy futures. Based on the proposed methodology, the research process starts with data gathering through interviews and national plans analysis. Then, findings were used as inputs to a simulation-based scenario development process. Scenarios are developed based on Monte Carlo simulation via cross-impact analysis technique purified based on expert judgments.

In this paper, to recognize Iran’s general approach to energy in the next 20 years, driving forces of change were introduced and used as input for the scenario development phase. Results showed sanctions play a significant role in Iran’s energy future and determine the directions of other driving forces. For renewable energy, it was proposed to increase the renewable share in Iran’s electricity generation mix to 5% of the total installed capacity. In the case of fossil fuel extraction, the maximum efficient rate was proposed for both oil and natural gas national production strategy.

This research is novel both in terms of application and theory. A new participatory scenario development method is used using simulations that are equipped based on experts’ judgments. Also from the practical perspective, this research targeted a future-oriented challenging problem to initialize national policy in a resource-rich developing economy (i.e. Iran).

The purpose of this paper is to present the common use of Delphi method, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and dynamic fuzzy cognitive maps (DFCM) for development of future scenarios in correlation with climate warnings.

The developed global model is based on a cognitive map composed of 28 factors. Among these factors two are independent, namely human consciousness and living standard. These two factors represent the most important levers of control within the designed model. Two approaches to scenario development have been applied, so that the comparison of the results between conventional fuzzy method and dynamic fuzzy method could give some further insights about global climate development and sustainability, as well as about differences between the two approaches.

Results of the first model (no‐time‐delay in cause‐effect relation) show that in general there is no absolute convergence to a single vector C(tn+1) for various initial values for C(0). But an interesting phenomenon of cyclical convergence of the model was observed, which coincides with the empirical research results that observe cycles in the climate change awareness and environmental impact. In the second model, time‐delay in the adjacency matrix was considered during the iteration. An interesting phenomenon of cyclical convergence of this model was observed as well. In two antimetric cases the authors have observed the phenomenon of two cycles, where the second, final cycle is developing after the occurrence of the first.

The paper can be of interest for foresight practitioners and policy makers who want to employ a hybrid approach to scenario development and use it as a learning device.

The paper presents a different approach, based on dynamic fuzzy cognitive maps, to future scenarios development related to climate warning.

Indigenous knowledge is an essential element for unveiling the evolutionary journey of socio-culture phenomena. One of the key challenges in foresight exercises is to incorporate social-culture issues such as culture, lifestyle and behavior (referred as indigenous knowledge) into the study. However, the statistical trends of those factors tend to be either not available or limited unlike the population or economic related factors. The purpose of this study is to present the use of valuable data from indigenous knowledge to enhance the foresight exercise through the better understanding of social dynamics and changes.

The fragmented form of indigenous knowledge is analyzed and converted into a structured data format and then interpreted to unveil the evolutionary journey of socio-cultural phenomena. This study applies a scenario development method to visualize the results of foresight by comparing before and after the integration of indigenous knowledge. Finally, an assessment was conducted to reflect the value enhancement resulting from the integration of indigenous knowledge into the foresight process.

With the proposed approach, the foresight study on the future development of Thai food was demonstrated. The findings of this study show that the use of indigenous knowledge on eating behavior, cooking style and food flavor helps improve the alternative scenarios for the future development of Thai foods.

Indigenous knowledge can be applied to develop plausible scenarios and future images in foresight exercises. However, by nature, indigenous knowledge is not well-structured and, therefore, needs to be analyzed and turned into structured data so that it can be interpreted before integrating into the foresight process.

This study is one of few studies addressing the opportunities for integrating indigenous knowledge into foresight process. Indigenous knowledge can unveil the evolution of socio-cultural changes to improve the results of foresight study, especially the cases where statistical data and trends may not be sufficient to foresee future development.

The purpose of this paper is to explore scenario development (SD) as a method for engaging known challenges in collaborative research projects, i.e. SD is the construct under investigation.

Criticism of the dominant, rational approach to project management (PM) and its underlying hypotheses highlights a considerable PM research gap for research projects (research problem). The authors undertake a six-step constructive research approach to investigate if SD (the construct) constitutes a fruitful method to support the management of collaborative research projects. A two-part literature review summarizes known challenges in collaborative research projects and introduces the history and application of SD methodology. The work includes participatory action research (PAR) in two case studies, constituting a qualitative research method.

The authors found the SD method to be useful for structuring and analyzing intuitive project processes. However, using SD in the management of single projects presents some fundamental challenges. SD, like PM, struggles with issues related to myopic decisions, a “predict and provide” attitude with clear aspects of path dependency in the project front-end as well as inconsistent and/or missing identification of success criteria among different stakeholders.

This paper does not provide any comprehensive, normative account of scenario techniques or compare SD with other foresight and future studies methods. Although PAR is in itself a research method that demands systematic description and execution, the focus of this paper is the overall constructive research approach.

The paper offers a broadened repertoire of methods to describe and analyse project stakeholder situations (collaborative aspects) and to structure and balance the need for both rational and intuitive project processes (research aspects). The SD method also supports development of graphical storylines and facilitates the use of influence diagrams, event trees and cost/benefit analysis.

Although PM literature contains several references to SD, the practical application of SD at single-project level has, to the authors’ knowledge, never been described in the PM literature.

The purpose of the paper is to present the common use of the Delphi method, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and dynamic fuzzy cognitive maps for the development of a future scenario in correlation with climate warming.

A combination of the Delphi method, the analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and dynamic fuzzy cognitive maps was employed to construct a future scenario as a learning device.

Based on the data, the future is not going to be so bad but also not very attractive even if it is assumed that human consciousness about global warming issues will remain high. After a few years or so it will be possible to stop negative climate processes but not possible to fix the problem in the sense that the situation we have now can be substantially improved.

This paper is of interest for foresight practitioners and policy makers who want to employ a hybrid approach to scenario development.

The paper is the first to try to use a combination of different methods for scenario development related to climate change.