Strategy Development With Future Scenarios: Brainstorming for the Future of a University

Introduction: Fighting Fire With Fire

In 1975, H. Igor Ansoff discarded the notion of developing universal strategic formulas, opting instead to discern faint indications of future developments in order to anticipate unforeseeable events (Ansoff, 1975). In 1998, Richard D'Aveni woke up to a new era of Hypercompetition (D'Aveni, 1998). In 2007, Gary Hamel believed that management and organization were falling behind in various areas of progress and innovation and pondered the future of management (Hamel & Breen, 2007). While these authors acknowledged the rapidity of change and lamented the challenges of coping with it, many of the technological advances that exist today (which are both means and ends of change) may have only existed in the imaginations of a few special minds at their times. Today, the speed and depth of change are truly out of hand.

Throughout human history, the source of change is the boundless imagination power of free and developed minds all over the world, so change is limited by only the limits of human imagination. While there are various strategic management and long-term planning tools that can assist organizations in navigating change, these tools are limited in their effectiveness. As a result, organizations often rely on the collective imagination of internal or external “bright minds” to anticipate and prepare for the future. To remain competitive in an ever-changing environment, it seems that organizations have no choice but harnessing this collective imagination. The concept of creating strategies based on future scenarios or revising and strengthening existing strategies with these scenarios stems from this idea (Wilkinson et al., 2013; Burt et al., 2017; Bradfield et al., 2005).

Universities are widely recognized as important centers for development, change, and learning, throughout history. This distinction places high expectations on universities to adapt and respond to change effectively. To meet these expectations, universities must continuously renew and transform themselves more urgently than other institutions. In this context, the senior management of X University, a young and growing university in Türkiye, has determined that new strategies and updating existing ones are necessary to keep pace with rapid change. To accomplish this goal, the university's leadership has decided to use the method of “Planning with Future Scenarios” along with other methods. This study, which you are currently reading, is one of the results of this decision, made as part of the university's efforts to improve quality and transform the institution.

The aim of this chapter is to share the process of brainstorming for future scenarios of a developing university, conducted with a group of experts, including academics from diverse fields such as physics, medicine, engineering, business management, and sociology (Chase, 2005; Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). In sharing this experience, the goal is for readers who are considering conducting a brainstorming session for creating future scenarios for their own organization to know the necessary steps and points to be careful of without needing additional resources. To achieve these objectives, an interpretive perspective (Creswell et al., 2007; Riessman, 2008) and the “Narrative Research Design” were chosen among qualitative research designs for this chapter.

The narrative research design essentially entails the narration of the experiences of researchers or other individuals who have lived through an event, phenomenon, or concept that is important and meaningful to them (Wang, 2020, Mücevher, 2020). The researcher examines the experience chronologically in a storytelling language and analyses this narrative from an interpretive point of view. The reason for presenting the subject in the form of a “story” rather than another format is that stories have been the most natural, simple, and memorable way for people to share events and feelings with others, as well as make sense of the world around them, since the earliest times of mankind.