What is a future scenario (Zukunftsszenario) in the scenario technique?

A coherent, detailed picture of a possible future world, built by combining compatible projections. A small number of scenarios is chosen to cover clearly different regions of the futures cone.

A scenario is not a prediction. It is a "what if" story that describes how society, economy, everyday life and technology would fit together in one possible future. Several scenarios are developed side by side, and they should be deliberately different, so together they span the space of futures instead of clustering around the most probable one.

A common way to get distinct scenarios is to pick the two most important and most uncertain driving forces and cross them in a 2×2 matrix, which yields four contrasting worlds (see the immigration example). Scenarios are used to test decisions ("does our plan still work in each world?") and to start conversations about which future is desirable.

Go deeper:

• Wikipedia: Scenario planning — how scenario sets are built and used to test strategies.