Science fiction, sustainability, and scenario use: Comprehensive scenarios for improved strategy development and innovation

Henrik Skaug Sætra

Technovation, 2024, vol. 132, issue C

Abstract: Businesses are increasingly integrating sustainability – or Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) – into existing strategies or developing separate sustainability strategies. Simultaneously, they are reporting on their sustainability related impacts, and the use of scenarios is becoming more common both in strategy development and risk assessments aimed at reporting. However, the value of the approaches to scenario analysis in the main sustainability reporting and ESG frameworks is questionable. They tend to be technically oriented and not conducive to explaining and communicating key strategically important aspects of the futures sought understood, which overlooks other critical sustainability dimensions such as social equity and inclusive economic growth. Furthermore, such use of scenarios is not conducive for promoting innovation. This article examines the current use of scenarios, focusing on common business practices, while also emphasising the need to be ambitious and utilise the potential of science fiction in the scenario process. I propose a practical, pragmatic, and “non-ideal” version of scenario development that is a) an improvement on current business practices and b) accessible and useful for companies wanting to utilize scenarios without extensive resources or the inclination to rely heavily on external scenario experts. This culminates in a recommendation that adopt a more comprehensive approach to sustainability scenarios than what is found in mainstream reporting frameworks. By deepening their engagement with scenarios, organisations will be able to improve the foundations for their strategy development processes, which will also be more tightly coupled with an organisation's innovation management and design processes. Most importantly, however, comprehensive science fiction scenarios can help enable a more sustainable future. By creating and shaping imaginaries of more sustainable futures, such futures become more likely.

Keywords: Science fiction; Scenarios; Strategy; ESG; Sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0166497224000269
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:techno:v:132:y:2024:i:c:s0166497224000269

DOI: 10.1016/j.technovation.2024.102976

Access Statistics for this article

Technovation is currently edited by Jonathan Linton

More articles in Technovation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().