Scenario Thinking......

    So as simple as it sounds, Scenario Thinking is just thinking about scenarios. The only twist is that the scenarios that you think about are about the future and to completely simplify it, it is almost just thinking about cause and effects. Scenario planners discover different trends that occur over time and predict how trends will be in the future in order for businesses to make "flexible long-term plans" as put by Wikipedia. Designers use the idea of scenario thinking/planning in order to decide what people will be interested in over the next few years to prevent creating designs that have very short lifespans and are only relevant to today's society. Disregarding previous posts about the idea of "design" I am going to separate specific designers from others such as artists, musicians, and movie makers. Most people will not actual phrase this process as "scenario thinking" but will use it quite a lot. As hinted at above, occupations such as musicians, artists, and movie-makers, whether or not they portray it as "Scenario thinking", are always aware that their products will be better and/or profit more if they design them to be relevant in the future. Hence, they all use scenario thinking to influence their plans and adjust them accordingly to make future trends. In reality, anyone that creates something, especially in today's society, tend to use scenario thinking but often times they do it subconsciously.
      Going back to musicians using scenario thinking, I guess I will change it to most musicians have this mindset. (I am bi-partial towards rock music so if my opinions plays a part in my next sentence I apologize but I think it is relevant.) I changed this statement due to thinking about several rap and pop musicians that I do not believe think about their music in the future at all and it shows since their music stays around for a very short time. On the other hand, it might just be their audience, but it seems as though rock musicians tend to create their music in a way that most people will still be listening to it years after its release date. Movie-makers, directors, script writers, or whatever you might believe is responsible for the creation of movies realize that the movie will take time to make and will most likely create the movie for the trends that are projected to be current during the actual release date.
      An uncommon thought of someone using scenario thinking is today's car designers. Car designers are constantly predicted what their consumers will want to buy in the future and constantly adjust their car blueprints accordingly. It seems logical to think that some of the newer car designs are really created in thought of the future. The designers for car companies realize that people are growing more accepting of greener cars and I think it is BMW that just came out with an "engine-less" car that is completely electric. I am not sure how well the car will go over in today's society but I do believe that by making that car, BMW will be able to perfect it by the time more people want an all electric car and will be ahead of the game. Or another car idea that is growing is a self-driven car, which I am almost sure that several companies already have prototypes of but haven't released any. But when the the first "self-parallel parking" car came out, companies saw how people reacted and continued to improve the idea into a full self-driving car. I'm sure that car companies understand the fact that these cars are not really practical and/or safe for real world use yet but it is a prime example of them thinking of how future cars and trends will be. As a made up scenario to help simplify it even more, imagine that human kind is going to keep using so much paper and build so many houses that the earth will run out of trees resulting in a lack of oxygen. Or a more positive outlook is that more people will use more electronic options of mailing, taking notes, etc... and start building houses out of different materials which would preserve more trees and result in more and possibly cleaner oxygen.