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A Game for all Seasons: Lessons and Learnings from the
JRC’s Scenario Exploration System
1
Laurent Bontoux
2
, John A. Sweeney
3
, Aaron B. Rosa
4
, Alice Bauer
5
, Daniel
Bengtsson
6
, Anne-Katrin Bock1, Ben Caspar
7
, Martin Charter
8
,
Epaminondas Christophilopoulos
9
, Frank Kupper
10
, Cathy Macharis
11
,
Cristian Matti
12
, Marco Matrisciano
13
, Jantien Schuijer7, Alice
Szczepanikova1, Tine van Criekinge
14
, Rosina Watson
15
Declarations of interest: none
Abstract:
The European Commission Joint Research Centre’s (JRC) Scenario
Exploration System (SES) is a foresight gaming system developed to
facilitate the application of futures thinking to policy-making. It was
originally geared at engaging EU policy-makers with scenarios in a
facilitated process with a low learning curve. Specifically, the SES was
designed to help participants, in less than three hours, to engage in
systemic thinking with a long-term perspective and to explore alternative
futures on specific issues and themes. When applied in various contexts,
the SES proved to have a broader range of applications, which led to
communities of practice emerging around the tool. Successful responses
to various requests to apply the tool beyond its original focus
demonstrated the versatility of the SES. Specifically we discovered its
ability to accommodate a large array of scenarios to discuss a very
diverse range of issues. The experience accumulated through several
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Our title is an intentional play on words that references the life of Sir Thomas More,
who was executed by Henry VIII for not going along with his plans. One of more
colleagues used this appellation, “a man for all seasons,” to describe More’s resolve. We
humbly believe that the SES shows the same resolve with regards to its efficacy as a tool
for exploring scenarios in a range of contexts on an array of topics.
2
European Commission Joint Research Centre, Rue de la Loi 200 (CDMA 04/016), BE-1049
Brussels, Belgium – laurent.bontoux@ec.europa.eu (corresponding author)
3
Narxoz Business School, Almaty, Kazakhstan
4
Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Karlsruhe, Germany
5
University of Kassel, Germany
6
Rise Research Institutes, Sweden
7
European Commission DG Environment, Brussels
8
Centre for Sustainable Design, Farnham, UK
9
Praxi Network, Greece
10
Athena Instituut, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
11
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
12
EIT Climate KIC, Brussels
13
Academy for Business in Society, Brussels
14
European Commission DG Development and Cooperation, Brussels
15
Cranfield University, UK
2
adaptations of the SES allows the analysis of the various strengths and
weaknesses of the tool as a platform for futures thinking and sharing
more broadly the know-how for the creation and application of new
versions. Ultimately this article seeks to contribute a series of design
suggestions for futures practitioners seeking to develop a playful mode of
interaction with scenarios, or those seeking to repurpose the original SES
system for use in their own project.
Key words:
Scenario Exploration System, foresight, scenarios, serious games
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1. Introduction
In 2012, the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC) was
requested to perform a long-term foresight study on “eco-industries”. This
study had a broad remit to engage in a systemic reflection on what a
sustainable transition in Europe could look like. It ran in 2013-2014 and
involved more than 40 people representing a broad range of professions,
origins and perspectives. The work was published as a technical report
(Bontoux and Bengtsson 2015) but perspectives for its further use were
very limited in spite of the study team striving to overcome the difficulties
encountered by many foresight projects to have policy impact (Cox et al.
2015).
This triggered a reflection on how to increase the impact of the study (and
foresight scenarios in general) and engage with people who were not part
of the process. This led the research team to consider serious gaming
techniques and approaches, which have become more popular and widely
used within the broader futures space (Wenzler and Chartier 1999,
Valkering et al. 2012; Milojević 2017; Rosa and Sweeney 2019; Sweeney
2017; Sweeney et al. 2019; Vervoort 2018). As previously discussed,
translating the original report (Bontoux et al. 2016) entailed collaboration
with external futures research groups concerning the aspects of play that
were to be incorporated through various game design decisions (Bontoux,
et al. 2016b).
The purpose of this paper is to share the learnings accumulated from the
use of the tool in a broad range of circumstances, and to explain how to
adapt the tool to serve the needs of any potential professional user. The
various mutations of the SES system also provide evidence for game
design principles with particular potency for future-oriented projects
(Rosa and Sweeney 2019).
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2. Putting the SES into Context
While games had been used for serious purposes for a long time, Abt
introduced the concept of “serious game” in 1970. The definition of this
concept signals an attempt to define games with “an explicit and carefully
thought-out educational purpose” that, importantly, are “not intended to
be played primarily for amusement” (Abt 1970). At the time of his book’s
release, Abt’s work was closely aligned with war games and red-team
simulations used by military, intelligence, and security agencies during
the height of the Cold War. With that said, war games have been played
at the U.S. Naval War College since 1866. Such institutions—in the U.S.
and elsewhere—continue to use serious games, simulations, and modeling
approaches toward a variety of ends. However, the application of serious
games is now expanding to other institutions, for example as teaching
tools, public engagement tools or in civilian areas of policy making.
Even before “futures studies” or “strategic foresight” were recognised as
such, games and simulations were often used to explore the future. Take
the RAND Corporation, which pioneered a range of dice-based Monte
Carlo “simulations” aimed at creating scenarios from a diverse range of
driving forces (Kahn 1955). Within the social sciences, and political
science in particular, games, simulations, and modeling approaches have
been used for decades to prepare for the future, especially to thwart
crises, for example overpopulation and the threat of nuclear armageddon
(Djaouti et al. 2011; Lasswell 1977; Lopez 1978; Chadwick 2000).
Recently, many new game concepts have been created using traditional
tools or taking advantage of online capabilities leading to a multiplication
of platforms of play, new markets, and genres of games (Candy, 2018a;
Fullerton, 2014). Overall, it seems that greater engagement is achieved
through the use of physical games, which include card-based games,
board games and role-playing rather than through online games (Dufva et
al., 2015). Ultimately, games and simulations provide a means to “use
the future,” since, as Dator points out, “games are the closest we can
come to actually […] pre-experiencing alternative futures so as to have a
wider understanding of what might be viable preferred futures” (Dator,
2017).
Taking a historical perspective to the study of play often leads to a
discovery of the powerful cognitive dynamic created by perceptions of the
world and the desire to win (Caillois, 2001) (Sutton-Smith, 2001) and is
strongly linked to culture (Huizinga, 1949). By enabling a sensorial and
psychological distance from the urgency of ‘reality’ and by lending a
creative freedom to the participants (Abt, 2002), a game is a powerful
way to explore in advance possible ways forward, solutions, or preventive
measures that would be impossible to come up with under the immediate
pressure of real life events as they occur. The circumstances thus created
by a futures-oriented game generate a safe space which is favorable to
reflection. This has been referred to under numerous terms such as ‘the
magic circle’ (Tekinbas & Zimmerman, 2003), ‘a ludic architecture’ (Walz,
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2010), and a ‘recursive space’ (Wood, 2012). It is a critical function of
play in serious game design (Schrage, 2000).
Advancements in data capture and analysis have influenced the evolution
of futures games. Internet-based foresight games can engage thousands
of people in collaborative scenario development (e.g. Foresight Engine
16
),
knowledge creation and trend scanning (e.g. Co:tunity
17
and
TrendHunter
18
). However, the outcomes of these exercises are often huge
unstructured datasets that require analysis and interpretation.
Finally, an often forgotten aspect of foresight games is their ability to give
a fun experience. In this respect, Inayatullah (Inayatullah, 2017) noted
that while (serious) foresight games are not applied for the fun that they
can generate, the fact that they are pleasant to participate in increases
their ability to reach their serious objectives.
The use of games in current foresight practice
The popularity of games amongst foresight practitioners and researchers
should not come as a surprise, especially given the field’s reliance upon a
“possibility-space” to explore potentialities (Miller 2006). Indeed, games
have become popular for “analyzing alternative futures by engaging with
affective creation, interaction, and response” (Dator et al. 2013).
Ultimately, the strongest connection between games and foresight centres
on uncertainty. As uncertainty is often seen as a possible danger or as a
hurdle to overcome before decision making, especially within the broader
policy space, it is by helping people deal with it that foresight can make a
useful contribution to policy-making. In fact, and that's an opportunity,
within the context of games, uncertainty is an asset. As evidenced by
Costikyan (2013, 2), "games require uncertainty to hold our interest, and
[…] the struggle to master uncertainty is central to the appeal of games".
This creates a strong driver to develop and use foresight serious games in
support to strategic reflection and policy-making.
With a view to help clarify such a diverse landscape, Dufva (Dufva et al.
2015) proposes to classify foresight games on a triangular space
according to their positioning between three specific objectives: providing
information, offering first-hand experience, and/or being used as an idea
generation platform. Typically, foresight games either pursue multiple
simultaneous objectives or can be used in different modes to serve
different objectives, which speaks to how they can provide a means to
experience complexity and engage with uncertainty rather than merely
discuss both. Figure 1 reproduces Dufva's triangle on which the SES has
been positioned (Christophilopoulos et al., in press).
16
http://www.iftf.org/what-we-do/foresight-tools/collaborative-forecasting-games/
17
http://cotunity.com
18
http://www.trendhunter.com
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Figure 1. Classic foresight games placed on Dufva's model (Christophilopoulos et al., in
press)
3. The SES in a nutshell
In “using the future” and involving uncertainty, the Scenario Exploration
System (SES) builds on the rich tapestry of games deployed across the
broader futures field. It offers the opportunity to four (or five) 'scenario
explorers' representing different stakeholder groups (typically policy
makers, businesses, or civil society organisations) to take action to reach
their long-term objectives. This model is loosely based on the concept of
the Hero’s Journey – a method for role playing across a topological field of
future possibilities (Schultz, Futures, Crews, Consulting, & Lum, 2012).
They do so across three time horizons (Curry & Hodgson, 2008) starting
from the present in a context created by a scenario while interacting with
each other under the judgment of a 'public voice'.
At the start of a scenario exploration, after a theme of common interest
has been selected, each 'scenario explorer' receives a limited amount of
resources coherent with the context created by a relevant scenario. He or
she must develop his/her role in sufficient detail and determine an
objective to reach at the horizon of the scenario. Each 'scenario explorer'
must then take action in turn, using his/her own resources, to try and
reach his/her own objective. After each time horizon, the 'public voice'
judges all actions and scores them. This makes it possible to calculate
scores for the 'scenario explorers'. 'Real Life' cards allow further
interactions. A full session lasts 2.5 to 3 hours and consists in the
consecutive exploration of two contrasting scenarios in which participants
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keep the same roles and objectives. This helps people grasp the key
constraints, drivers and uncertainties around a topic of interest.
Standard templates have been developed to record the basic content of
each session for possible use in later debriefing. Observers or note takers
can also contribute to a richer harvesting of what happens during a
scenario exploration. The full details of the development of the original
'edition' of the SES (the Sustainable Transitions edition) were published
elsewhere (Bontoux et al. 2016). The tool itself is available under a
Creative Commons license (CC-BY-SA).
The fact that the SES is based on future scenarios creates a safe space to
simulate possible responses connected to any issue of interest to the
participants. Its set up is a vast oversimplification of reality but it still
provides enough complexity to challenge participants in a way that is
usually perceived as realistic. Also, the fact that 'scenario explorers' only
have a limited amount of resources to spend over their complete
exploration and can only take one action per round focusses minds and
pushes them to set priorities and be strategic. Figure 2 (below) illustrates
a scenario exploration in progress.
Figure 2: A scenario exploration in progress
4. Main observations from initial SES demonstration and testing
Immediately after the development of the SES, the team embarked on a
year of demonstration and testing of the tool with a very broad range of
people and under many different circumstances (over 150 people, always
on the original 'edition'). This was performed with a systematic request
for feedback through a standard 12-question participant survey that
produced some learning complemented by conversations with people who
had just experienced a scenario exploration session.
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During this testing, the SES showed that it can help people imagine what
scenarios could mean for themselves and for the issues they are
interested in. This offers the opportunity to translate what a broad future
context could mean for very specific issues or stakeholders, a clear added
value to prepare for decision-making. The tool also showed its ability to
operate well with a very wide diversity of people in terms of age (12 to
67), gender, professional background and geographical origin. The
Sustainable Transitions edition of the SES also showed its ability to be
used to discuss a very broad range of topics using the same scenarios. In
addition to questions directly linked to the sustainable transition itself, it
was used to discuss renewable energy, the future of healthcare,
migration, new business models for supermarkets, the impact of
automation and other issues.
By the mere fact of using scenarios for the future, which are by definition
imaginary, the SES also showed that it can create a safe, yet dynamic
space for conversation so crucial to foresight; participants do not have to
defend the agenda that they are pursuing today. In this way, there is a
playful emergence at the heart of the SES that facilitates applied futures
thinking. Also, the fact that the SES offers simultaneously different ways
and different perceptions of winning makes it possible to avoid a single
linear winner-loser relationship at the end of a session. This creates a
more open field for conversation, more reflective of the complexities of
the world and of a diversity of perspectives than a classic winner-loser
relationship. This has been seen to facilitate conversations after a
scenario exploration session between people who would have been
unlikely to exchange in a meaningful way otherwise.
Feedback has shown that most participants (average score of 7-8 out of
10) recognise that the SES helped them think long-term and take a
strategic perspective. Resource limitation and the setting of long-term
objectives clearly promote the adoption of strategic thinking but the
feeling of the practitioners is that this is unlikely to be the whole story.
Other key elements are the presentation of a set of megatrends at the
start of every scenario exploration and the prescribed narratives delivered
by the 'scenario exploration master'. This last element occurs in the three
time horizons of the SES. While this forces a long-term time dynamic on
participants, the creative license of the 'scenario exploration master,’ who
aids in building a captivating story, may also help participants imagine
longer-term futures.
On a different register, a majority of participants have also expressed
their gratitude for the learning that takes place in a session, thereby
confirming the potential power of role-play in this respect (Linser, 2004).
This learning comes through two main channels. The first occurs when
participants explain the rationale for the actions they take during scenario
exploration, thereby sharing some of their own experience, knowledge
and expertise with others. The second channel is the unexpected realistic
situations that appear during scenario exploration sessions. This makes
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participants discover unsuspected dynamics that promote systemic
understanding of the issue being investigated. This dynamic is at its
strongest when participants play roles where they have a lot of expertise.
Typically, this happens when their roles are close to their real life
occupation.
Another type of learning takes place when participants take up roles with
which they are not familiar. In that case, the level of expertise to share
around the table in terms of proficiency in the role is much lower.
However participants make an effort to discover the world from a different
perspective and must learn quickly what a person in this role would do in
real life. The moderator and/or other participants can support this
process.
Another interesting observation is linked to emotional engagement –
another core component of critical and serious game design (Sylvester,
2013). As participants have ample freedom and creative agency to
develop their own role, they tend to believe in the character that they
have developed and in the actions taken. The roles feel real, especially
when they are close to participants' real life activities (Aarseth, 2007).
This leads to feelings of pleasure or disappointment depending on what
happens around the board.
Discussions around possible collaborations are most of the time a
particular moment of emotional engagement (Powers, 1986), and strong
emotional engagement leads to better retention of the experience (Kear
and Bown 2015).
4. Building experience on the use of the tool
The effort spent in demonstrating the SES to a large number of people
eventually led to requests for applying it to new issues. This put the team
in front of the challenge of developing versions tailored to a wide variety
of issues and needs. The fact that the original edition had already proven
to be successful to explore a diversity of issues with a wide range of
people using the same basic set of scenarios was encouraging.
4.1 A first real-life application: food safety and nutrition
The first successful experience of adaptation of the SES was for food
safety and nutrition. It was performed by the JRC's EU Policy Lab upon
request from the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety (DG
SANTE) of the European Commission to support a strategic reflection over
how the policy work on food safety and food innovation could evolve after
15 years of a strong regulatory focus. This edition was developed by using
existing scenarios from a foresight study on food safety and nutrition
performed for DG SANTE (Mylona et al., 2016). It was applied with a set
of DG SANTE's actual stakeholders in a simulation mode in a 1-day
workshop format. This experience was part of a broader foresight exercise
that is described in detail elsewhere (Bock and Bontoux, 2017). The SES
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session was used to feed an internal strategic reflection exercise. The
specific challenges here were time efficiency and relevance of outcomes.
Following this successful foray into EU policy-making and a large
dissemination effort, more people started to enquire over possibilities to
apply the SES to other purposes. This led to the development of a number
of spin-off editions of the SES (presented briefly below) and to the
discovery of new applications for the tool, in line with the team's effort to
make foresight scenarios more usable.
4.2. Circular Ocean
This edition was requested by partners from the EU funded Circular Ocean
project
19
in their efforts to find solutions to deal with waste fishing nets
and ropes in Northern Europe. The purpose here was to create a
constructive conversation between all stakeholders involved (fishermen,
harbour masters, SMEs and fisheries agencies). This version was based
on the Sustainable Transitions edition with a new set of roles developed to
match the relevant stakeholder groups. This version was used at least
twice (in Cork and Reykjavic) in multiple-table settings and led to
requests for the original version of the SES by people related to the
project. The experience with multiple tables in Reykjavic gave the first
indications about consistency and reproducibility of outcomes.
Scenarios: sustainable transitions in the EU
Scenario explorers: harbour master, fisheries agency, fishermen,
recycler (small or medium enterprise)
Target group: real stakeholders of the waste fishing net issue
Purpose: stakeholder engagement, connection along the full chain of
actors to find practical solutions to the issue.
Challenges: novelty of approach on unsuspecting and unknown
stakeholders
4.3. Dragon Star Plus
This edition was developed by partners from the EU funded Dragon Star
Plus project with the help of the JRC as a basis for a EU-China
conversation on long-term cooperation in science, research and
innovation. It used new scenarios
20
developed by the project
19
http://www.circularocean.eu/circularnews/circular-ocean-hosts-irelands-first-scenario-
exploration-event/
20
http://www.dragon-star.eu/china-2030-research-and-innovation-landscape-just-
released/
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(Christophilopoulos et al. 2017). The purpose here was to create
conversations between European and Chinese stakeholders involved in
R&I to feed long-term strategy development. This initiative managed to
test SES China in a workshop in Shanghai with 40 participants, including
the Minister Counsellor in charge of research from the EU Delegation in
Beijing and the president of the Chinese Academy of Science and
Technology for Development (CASTED). After having been used in a
multi-table setting in Shanghai, this edition was then used in the context
of the ENRICH project to help stakeholders reflect on the design of the
European Research and Innovation Excellence Centres in China.
Scenarios: EU-China cooperation in Research & Innovation
Scenario explorers: Researcher, European university, European
Commission, Chinese government, European/Chinese university,
European/Chinese company
Target group: Chinese and European stakeholders in research and
innovation
Purpose: Stakeholder engagement, promotion of dialogue, strategic
reflection.
Challenges: cultural barriers, long distance planning, need to train
moderators, high level participants
4.4. "Mobility is a Serious Game"
The mobility sector faces huge challenges but also offers many
opportunities for development thanks to new technologies and services.
“Mobility is a Serious Game” was developed in 2017 to explore the future
of mobility with an open mind. It is a version of the SES that was co-
created by 6 people professionally involved or concerned by mobility
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.
The game set is distributed by The Shift (Macharis 2018).Its purpose is
to help address concrete mobility issues or explore future scenarios by
putting a broad range of stakeholders around the table (business,
government, NGOs and the public voice).
This version of the SES has been used in very diverse settings, ranging
from business environments such as the top management at the Colruyt
Group, to educational settings and working meetings of mobility experts
to explore the implementation of autonomous vehicles.
“Mobility is a Serious Game” presents the scenarios on two double-sided
boards, one scenario per side (See Figure 3). These scenarios are
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C. Macharis from the mobility research group at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB-
MOBI), K. De Maesschalck from the Colruyt Group, K. De Schepper from Inland
Navigation Europe and CleanAirBXL, S. Vanden Brande from Durabrik, G. Boone from
Fockedey, M. Vertriest from Flanders’ Netwerk Duurzame Mobiliteit
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constructed around two axes: “Individual vs Collective” action and
«Welfare vs Wellbeing».
The tool was designed to be able to engage with a very broad range of
stakeholders to discuss concrete mobility issues. The applications have
been stakeholder engagement, promotion of dialogue, strategic reflection
and problem solving.
Scenarios: mobility scenarios (Harmonia, Symphonia, Silicon Europe and
Communopolis)
Scenario explorers: Business (x2), government (x2), NGO (x2)
Target group: Broad range of stakeholders, the public
Purpose: Problem solving, awareness raising, promotion of dialogue,
strategic reflection.
Challenges: simplification and shortening of the sessions
Figure 3: The "Harmonia" board for "Mobility is a serious game"
4.5. Climate-KIC
The cooperation of the JRC with the European Institute of Technology's
European knowledge and innovation community working to accelerate the
transition to a zero-carbon economy (Climate-KIC), focussed on the
project Climate Mitigation Fund (CMF) 2.0. Here, an ad-hoc adaptation
process was developed that led to the creation of two city-specific
versions of the SES.
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The Climate-KIC's CMF 2.0 project had engaged in an intense six-month
conceptual phase to design local climate funds for Bologna (Italy) and
Frankfurt am Main (Germany). However, the intended users were
struggling to adopt the project results, which, while contextualized, were
still too abstract. Many strategic decisions to reach implementation were
waiting to be taken. In both cities, the local public administrations
wondered whether they should own the process of setting up a fund or
whether this endeavour should be led by business.
Applying the SES made it possible to bridge the gap between the abstract
results of the EU-funded project and the local processes. The novelty here
for the SES was that only one scenario was available: the long-term
vision developed for each city. As the administrations were wondering
whether they or business should set up the funds, the contrast needed for
the SES was created by developing alternative paths towards each vision:
a market-led one and a policy led one.
In practice, the process took place in two stages. First, local stakeholders
in Bologna and Frankfurt developed visions for the future of specific
neighbourhoods. This was then used to create (immediately after the
visioning session in the case of Bologna) the contrasting narratives (a
market-led and a policy-led path) needed for the scenario exploration.
While the vision development and SES adaptation process took place
through a two-day workshop in Bologna, in Frankfurt it followed a process
in two separate steps over a few months. The SES was then used to help
local stakeholders reflect concretely on how to achieve these long-term
visions.
Adapting the resources for each role according to its relevance in a
market-driven versus a policy driven scenario created very powerful
learnings among the participants. The scenario exploration revealed how
different framework conditions impact the opportunities and constraints of
each of the roles.
Scenarios: Contrasted Market led vs. Policy led scenarios based on local
visions developed in Bologna and in Frankfurt
Scenario explorers: business, government, NGO, funding/development
agency
Target group: local stakeholders and residents
Purpose: reflect concretely with all stakeholders on how to combine
policy actions and financial instruments to green a city or neighbourhood.
Challenges: having only one vision instead of contrasting scenarios,
need to make an adapted version in real time, diversity of participants,
cultural differences.
4.6. EU-Innovate
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This edition was developed by partners from the EU funded EU-Innovate
project with the help of the JRC to get people to reflect on the eco-
innovations that would be needed to achieve sustainable lifestyles. The
time horizon of the exercise was 2050. It used sustainable lifestyle
scenarios that had been developed by the earlier EU funded SPREAD
project.
In this version of the SES participants interact with radical social, political
and economic changes that would have to take place in society to achieve
four contrasting sustainable lifestyles by 2050 (see Figure 4).
The EU-Innovate SES introduces a fifth scenario explorer role - the citizen
innovator - and a “post-truth” public voice. The citizen innovator
represents the opportunity for citizen-led innovation to catalyse the shift
towards a sustainable Europe, while the “post-truth” public voice
represents the “new” normal of social media where experts are dismissed,
alternative facts are offered and citizens can offer opinions on everything.
As coordinator of the EU-Innovate project, the Academy of Business in
Society (ABIS) produced and disseminated 100 boxes of this edition of
the SES to test and apply it further across its network (business and
academic).
Since the beginning of 2017, ABIS has supported the delivery of two
demonstration sessions during its annual events in Brussels with more
than 50 people participating in each event. The opportunity for academics
and business representatives to experience such sessions led to the
organization of two pilot workshops with students at Cranfield Business
School in the UK and Aalto University in Finland.
ABIS and the EU Policy Lab also jointly ran a webinar on the SES which is
being used by the ABIS network to understand the game rules and
components and its possible application as an educational tool. Since
then, this edition of the SES has become a standard teaching tool for
Master’s level students at Cranfield University.
Scenarios: sustainable lifestyles scenarios from the SPREAD project
Scenario explorers: policy maker, civil society organisation, small
entrepreneur, established business and citizen innovator
Target group: businesses, interested citizens, students
Purpose: generate concrete reflections on how to innovate and create
business opportunities to achieve sustainable lifestyles.
Challenges: project partners not familiar with foresight, relatively old
scenarios invented elsewhere
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Figure 4: The EU-Innovate version of the SES in action
4.7. NANO2ALL
This edition of the SES was prepared by the JRC and its partners from the
EU funded NANO2ALL project. Its purpose was to make stakeholders and
the public reflect more in-depth on the future applications of
nanotechnologies and on how to make sure that research and innovation
in this domain become more responsible. This SES’s project team
established a logic articulated around how technophile versus
technophobe a society is and how “centralised versus de-centralised
governance is, creating tailor-made scenarios. This version has been
translated into six languages (EN, ES, FR, IT, PL, SE) for use by science
museums in six countries in stakeholder engagement workshops.
Scenarios: purpose made scenarios focussed on openness to technology
Scenario Explorers: policy maker, civil society organisation, researcher,
business
Target group: citizens and stakeholders concerned by nanotechnologies
Purpose: deepen the general debate around nanotechnologies and how
to achieve responsible research and innovation in an inclusive way;
generate policy recommendations to achieve these objectives.
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Challenges: need to train multiple moderators, creating 6 language
versions, cultural differences
4.8. JRC foresight project on the future of migration in the EU and beyond
The JRC foresight project on the future of migration in the EU and beyond
developed this edition of the SES to help stakeholders dealing with
migration from very different positions reflect on the multiple facets of the
issue and develop in-depth reflections. The key point was to help
participants move beyond this politicised and often-polarising issue and
grasp the complexity of migration processes and policymaking. As such,
this was meant to inject more long-term thinking into the policy debate
and reveal the importance of reaching beyond migration policies and
collaborating with diverse stakeholders to better manage migration in the
EU. This edition of the SES applies migration 2030 scenarios derived from
global scenarios developed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) and UK Foresight. It was used in several
occasions with very different target audiences, both from the EU and from
migrants’ countries of origin. This showed the ability of the SES to
operate well across widely diverse cultures, sometimes involving people
from Africa, Asia and Europe around the same table. The project resulted
in a Migration discussion toolkit, also available under Creative Commons,
offering six discussion tools in addition to the SES to stimulate forward-
looking debates about migration. The Migration edition of the SES is now
being used further with migration officials from countries of origin, EU
Member States and at universities.
Scenarios: Migration 2030 scenarios
Scenario Explorers: policy maker, civil society organisation, migrant,
agency
Target group: policy makers, citizens, stakeholders dealing with
migration, students
Purpose: generate concrete reflections on how to address migration
issues and to improve migration policies, strengthen collaboration among
migration stakeholders and support coherence with other policies that
shape migration flows and outcomes.
Challenges: need to create adapted scenarios, diversity of potential
stakeholders, need to operate across cultures
4.9. Operation Sustainability: the city greening game
This edition of the SES was developed by the JRC jointly with the
Directorate General for the Environment of the European Commission (DG
17
ENV). The objective here was to develop a stakeholder engagement tool
in the context of Green Week 2018 that could be used to help people
reflect on urban sustainability issues in a systemic perspective. Green
Week is a yearly conference and set of side events across the EU Member
States to promote and reflect on EU environmental policies and discuss
environmental issues. Requirements were that the tool could be used
across the EU (in all EU languages) with the ability to engage with the
broadest possible public. In view of the time constraints and of the lack of
suitable scenarios, this request created the opportunity to develop and
test a streamlined and comprehensive process to generate a completely
new edition of the SES. Building on the experience from the EIT Climate-
KIC adaptation, the objective was to go from the creation of scenarios
from scratch all the way to the production of a fully functioning SES
prototype (all SES elements) in a few days. This succeeded here and this
edition of the SES (see Figure 5 below) has been translated into eight
official EU languages so far. The positive feedback received after the
scenario exploration session at Green Week 2018 led DG ENV to request
the organisation of a larger similar session at Green Week 2019.
Scenarios: purpose made broad European urban scenarios
Scenario Explorers: city authority, civil society organisation, national
authority, business
Target group: broad public and relevant stakeholders
Purpose: support a citizen engagement effort to reflect on sustainability
issues for the future in the run up to Green Week 2018.
Challenges: time pressure, lack of adequate scenarios, need to have a
tool that can work for many cities across the EU under very diverse
circumstances
18
Figure 5: Illustration of the design applied to the "City Greening Game" edition of the
Scenario Exploration System
5. First lessons
The range of cases of applications presented here, complemented and
confirmed by others since, led to the progressive discovery of many more
possible uses of the tool and types of harvesting than those intended at
the design stage.
Reflecting back on the set of adaptations of the Scenario Exploration
System presented above, four characteristics of the tool became obvious:
versatility, broad range of potential users, ability to engage with very
diverse participants and circumstances, and adaptability. The Reykjavik
event also gave preliminary evidence in terms of consistency and
reproducibility. Coupled to this we also discovered the many ways the
multiple users captured the results from the scenario explorations.
In this section, we are analysing in more detail the return on this
experience, except for adaptability, which will be addressed in the next
section, and presented in a way to help readers understand the
adaptation process and its requirements would they like to apply the tool
and/or create their own versions of it.
There are now a number of proficient users and more spin-offs are being
developed, which is to say that the SES has taken on a life of its own.
19
5.1. Functioning with a very broad range of people
First of all, and in view of the largely positive feedback received from the
numerous participants we engaged with across the projects presented
above, the SES has shown its ability to work with a very broad range of
people. To date, it has been used with participants from 12 to 67 years
old, on three continents (Europe, North America and Asia), and with
people from extremely diverse cultural and professional backgrounds. As
stated previously, all these experiences left a feeling of satisfaction on the
part both of the participants (as witnessed by participants surveys) and of
the users of the SES in all the projects mentioned here. The tool has also
shown its ability to make participants engage constructively at all
hierarchical levels (e.g. Mobility is a serious game was played at company
board level, the Dragon Star Plus SES involved the president of the
Chinese Academy for Science and Technology for Development and a
Minister Counsellor from the EU Delegation in Beijing) and in spite of very
large differences in hierarchical levels around a single table
(Christophilopoulos et al. 2018). Sessions have also been held both in
homogeneous (e.g. in Bologna, Cork or Frankfurt) and heterogeneous
(e.g. multinational European, EU-China, EU-emigration countries, etc.)
cultural environments with equal success (Szczepanikova and Van
Criekinge 2018, Christophilopoulos et al. 2018). Experiences with
participants from diverse professional backgrounds and types of education
(often also multicultural) showed the ability of the SES to create
constructive conversations to address complex issues between people
who would not easily engage in a constructive conversation
spontaneously, e.g. industry-NGO (Bock and Bontoux 2017). Beyond
evidence from participant surveys, success has been assessed largely on
the basis of the decision from the original requesting projects to use the
tool further after the end of the initial assignment, often in a different
setting.
5.2. Ability to deal with any topic
Secondly, as demonstrated by the examples of adaptation described
above, the SES can be applied to explore a broad range of issues or topics
of interest. Not only can each set of scenarios be used to discuss various
subjects (as was demonstrated by the original edition of the tool), but the
ability to change scenarios expands the possibilities tremendously. It is
also interesting to note that the scale of the question to be discussed in a
scenario exploration session is to a large extent determined by the scale
of the scenario used. In other words, scaling the scenarios is what scales
gameplay. For example, while the discussions in Bologna focussed on
issues at the scale of a city neighbourhood, discussions on EU-China
research cooperation in the Shanghai workshop raised high-level,
international scale governance questions (Christophilopoulos et al. in
20
press). In the NANO2ALL project, conversations were at the scale of one
technology (nanotechnology).
5.3. Creating a positive and constructive atmosphere
Thirdly, extensive use of feedback surveys after SES sessions showed a
clearly positive picture. Typically, three fourth of participants find the
experience enjoyable, get engaged in long-term future thinking and find
the platform useful to learn from each other and to enlarge their frame of
reflection. Critical comments relate mostly to issues that could be
addressed by enhancing the performance of the moderator, to elements
that were not optimised for the particular issue explored or to misaligned
expectations from the participants. In cases where the SES was applied
as a very innovative methodology, with no previous track record of
successful application of serious games and in an ambiance of
apprehension, especially in Frankfurt and in Shanghai, the experiences
have proven to be positive and convincing, both on the side of the
organisers and of the participants (Christophilopoulos et al. in press). This
fits well with previous experience on serious games (Ritterfeld et al.
2009).
5.4. Consistency and reproducibility
The Reykjavik experience must be noted as particularly interesting in at
least one respect. It is the only time several parallel sessions (four in this
case) were run on the same specific issue using the exact same roles with
the same objectives and the same two scenarios in the same sequence.
The scenario exploration masters and the participants were the only
difference. As the exercise was performed to try and generate
recommendations in line with the specific objectives of the Circular Ocean
project, all tables were instructed to draw concrete conclusions from the
scenario exploration. At the end of the exercise, when all ideas were
collected, we discovered a large degree of consistency across tables. This
would be worthy of further investigation and points toward the tool’s
utilization as a research device beyond knowledge-sharing and
collaborative insight generation.
The SES was used in parallel tables using common sets of scenarios and
broad role types in several other occasions but never with such level of
coordination as the objective is usually to explore the breadth of possible
perspectives around a topic and not to go in depth in one very specific
issue.
21
5.5. Results from scenario explorations
As mentioned above, the diversity of projects with which we engaged
made us discover a rich landscape of potential outcomes from the
application of the SES.
The ‘basic data harvest’ foreseen as a standard in the tool is the use of
the templates provided to all participants: the scenario explorers write
down a brief description of their roles and then record the actions that
they take at every round. The public voice describes the bias that it is
taking when judging the actions taken by the scenario explorers and then
notes for each round and each scenario explorer the main points justifying
the expression of that judgement. The scenario exploration master
records the scores.
This basic harvest can be used as a basis for debriefing discussions after a
session but does not capture the sophistication of the conversations and
negotiations taking place during the scenario exploration.
Using a dedicated observer and note taker (who can ask questions of
clarification to the participants during the scenario exploration) offers a
much richer harvest, specifically tailored to the issue of interest. This is
what was done for example in the project with the Climate-KIC.
We have seen scenario explorations used to generate and collect concrete
ideas about a very specific issue: for example, the Reykjavik sessions
were used to harvest ideas on what could be done with waste fishing
nets.
In other cases, people were not so much interested is a specific
documented outcome of the session, but more in the mental exercise and
the reflection generated by the scenario exploration as a way to broaden
the thinking of the participants and make people discover the systemic
complexity of an issue. This was particularly the case with the EU-
Innovate edition used at Cranfield university to challenge students and
with the NANO2ALL edition to help people discover the positive and
negative sides of applications of nanotechnologies as well as the different
perspectives that the various stakeholders would have on them.
In other cases, the SES sessions were used as a sort of icebreaker when
people did not know how to make stakeholders with very different group
cultures and little initial trust engage constructively. This was the case in
the first use of the tool in the Circular Ocean project. The various partners
had very different approaches and ways of communicating and some were
afraid to be saddled with additional burdens and were therefore reluctant
to share much. The safe space created by the SES, in which participants
took their real life roles, worked very well to make people feel at ease,
get to know each other and share a lot of very practical and realistic
information, each in the mode that they felt most comfortable with.
In the case of Mobility is a Serious Game, what people needed was a tool
to help put stakeholders around a table to solve real life mobility issues
22
(e.g. improve a problematic crossroad). There, the emphasis is not so
much on the future but on putting all relevant stakeholders around the
table, making them reveal their diverse perspectives and expose very
quickly the systemic dimensions that have to be taken into account.
Participants also come up spontaneously with proposals for solutions that
elicit immediate feedback in a constructive way. The outcome of such an
exercise is a group of people with a shared understanding of a very
specific issue, recognition of the various perspectives and a common
knowledge of the possible ways forward. The future dimension comes
from the time needed to develop and apply a solution.
In yet other cases, the main outcome that was sought was a fresh
approach to feeding a long-term strategic reflection (e.g. food safety and
nutrition, Dragon Star Plus). This happened both by having the interested
parties taking their own roles in the scenario exploration sessions and by
harvesting specifically strategic elements of the conversations taking
place during the scenario explorations.
6. From a specific tool to an adaptable platform
The accumulated experience presented above has taught us a lot about
the adaptability of the SES, the relative ease with which new editions can
be produced, and how it can be tailored to specific needs and
circumstances. After a few years of usage we can now say with
confidence that the SES has turned out to be a very flexible platform for
using foresight scenarios that can be tailored to specific needs in a
number of ways. From the simplest to the most extensive, the levels of
adaptation are:
1. Using an existing version to explore and discuss different issues;
2. Changing the trends, drivers and other contextual elements while
keeping the background scenarios and roles from an existing
version to address specific needs;
3. Changing the roles on an existing version to cater to specific
stakeholders;
4. Changing the scenarios (and contextual elements) but keeping
existing roles to explore new issues;
5. Changing the scenarios, the contextual elements and the roles.
Smaller changes around the platform can be easily introduced to tailor
any scenario exploration session to the needs: how to deal with variable
drivers, adapting variable drivers, changing megatrends, changing rules
of collaboration, imposing specific characteristics to the roles, etc. Of
course, it is also possible to simply change the participants. All this can be
done on the go and requires minimal work.
One important lesson from the last three years is that one set of good
quality broad scenarios can be used to generate very interesting
explorations on a wide variety of topics. For example, the original
23
scenarios (sustainable transitions) were used to explore issues as diverse
as migration, food safety, the future of healthcare, the roll out of
renewable energy sources, the increasing use of automation, etc. In other
words, one does not necessarily need tailor made scenarios to discuss a
particular issue. Table 1 provides an overview of the effort and expertise
needed for each level of adaptation beyond a good understanding of the
tool.
Level of
adaptation
Effort needed
Know-how needed
1
Minimal
Minimal
2
Minimal
Some understanding of what
are trends and drivers
3
Minimal
Topical know-how on the
issue of interest
4
From limited if scenarios are
available to potentially
extensive if one needs to
develop fully fledged high
quality scenarios
Scenario building know-how
needed
5
From limited if scenarios are
available to potentially
extensive if one needs to
develop fully fledged high
quality scenarios
Scenario building know-how
needed
Table 1: Levels of effort and expertise needed for each level of adaptation of the
Scenario Exploration System
Adapting the scenario explorer roles in any SES edition is very easy and
gives a lot of scope to expand the range of applications and issues
explored and to tailor the tool to specific needs. For example, creating
specific roles has allowed the Circular Ocean project to focus discussions
on the recycling of waste fishing nets and ropes using the original
sustainable transitions scenarios. However, it should be noted that to
ensure a successful scenario exploration, the roles should belong to
clearly defined stakeholder categories and be sufficiently independent of
each other.
The utilisation of existing scenarios from different sources to create a new
edition of the SES is also quite easy, as illustrated by the EU-Innovate
project. It simply requires two main interventions. First, for each
24
scenario, to create a plausible sequence of events in three time steps that
would take participants from today to each end scenario; then, for each
scenario, to attribute a coherent amount of resources to each role.
Creating a new version of the SES with entirely new scenarios requires
more effort as this adds the need to create the new scenarios in the first
place. The time needed is then largely impacted by how much effort is
dedicated to the creation of the new scenarios. Two examples illustrate
this issue. The first is that of the Climate-KIC, in which the visions
developed by the project could be very quickly used to make new
versions of the SES. The second is that of 'Operation Sustainability - The
City Greening Game', for which a 1-day fast-track process was developed
to generate all the material needed for a new 'edition' of the SES. The
principle is as follows:
1. Gather a large enough group (10-15?) of competent and
complementary people for developing the scenarios of interest.
2. Use the morning to run a quick scenario matrix building exercise
(e.g. from drivers of change to the identification of a scenario logic
in four quadrants).
3. Spend just enough time on each of the quadrants so that all
participants 'get' the scenarios.
4. In the afternoon, split the participants in groups and develop the
stories bringing us from today to the scenarios in three time steps.
5. Quick review for completeness and consistency.
6. Identification of the desired roles and attribution of resources per
scenario.
After such an exercise, the only work left is that of actually producing
copies of the new edition of the SES. Again, this can take from one or two
days up to months, depending on the scale and sophistication of the
effort. The preparation of the City Greening Game gave first-hand
experience of this process that can be shared with potential future users.
7. Applicability of the platform
Looking back on the experience accumulated so far, one can identify
three main domains of applications for the SES.
7.1 Forward-looking strategic and systemic reflection
Forward-looking strategic and systemic reflection was the original
intention behind the development of the Scenario Exploration System.
This objective seems to be achieved quite well if one is to believe the
response statistics of the SES feedback surveys and the experience in the
European Commission (Bock & Bontoux, 2017). The dynamic interactions
between scenario explorers, the influence and considerations brought by
the public voice, the availability of limited resources and the external
25
constraints brought by the scenarios force participants to engage in
strategic and systemic thinking without realising. This aspect emerges
most strongly for the policy-oriented activities illustrated above (e.g. food
safety, migration). The long-term perspective brought by the scenarios
also seems to work, but participants usually have difficulty making full
use of the contextual megatrends presented at the start of the sessions.
One possible explanation is that as the SES provides a lot of 'dynamic'
information to participants, so that information that might appear to be
more static as part of the background gets forgotten. Also, the long-term
impacts of megatrends are usually not something most participants reflect
much upon and are familiar with.
7.2 Engagement
This has been the most popular way to use the SES among non-policy
users in the EU projects in which we participated. Three main variations
were observed:
- Engage with a broad range of diverse stakeholders to discuss the
many dimensions of a broad issue in an open but structured way (e.g.
mobility) to try and make solutions emerge;
- Engage with a targeted public representing specific groups of
stakeholders on a specific issue to elicit ideas for implementation at policy
or industry level. For example, reflecting on future applications of
nanotechnologies in specific domains helped understand how to make
future R&D more 'responsible', while reflecting on sustainable lifestyles
shed light on the types of innovation that are needed. The specific focus
does not prevent the emergence of results, which are more broadly
applicable;
- Engage with a specific chain of (local) actors to make them work
together better to solve a very practical (but so far intractable) issue. This
helps break the ice and create awareness of each other's perspectives and
constraints to unlock conversations on win-win solutions (e.g. mobility,
climate mitigation).
More generally, the SES appears to be able to create conditions
favourable to mutual learning from participants and for networking, as it
is often used to bring around a same table people from very diverse
backgrounds, who would have otherwise never met. The SES, while being
an extreme simplification of the world, also creates conditions which are
sufficiently challenging to push people into thinking out of their comfort
zone, thereby leading to self-learning and creating awareness of issues or
aspects previously unknown to the participants or underestimated.
Finally, the SES has proved to be an interesting way to promote the EU
Policy Lab and to bring the European Commission closer to EU citizens as
exemplified by the efforts around Green Week 2018.
26
7.3 Education
Since 2016, many scenario exploration sessions were held to demonstrate
the tool to people who were curious about it and wanted to understand it
better. While this can be perceived as not being a 'use' of the SES per se,
reflecting on what happened running tens of demonstration sessions
showed a certain usefulness of the exercise in various respects.
First of all, the application of the SES in projects in which people in
teaching positions were partners opened a door on the use of the SES as
a tool for teaching. As a result, it has been used in sessions with bachelor
and masters students in various European universities and teaching
institutions to pursue different learning objectives. The merits of games
for learning have long been known (Bokyeong et al. 2009) and these
initiatives with the SES build on a whole body of previous evidence.
In the first applications, professors were interested in exploring students’
approach to foresight scenario exploration with a particular focus on
sustainable business models, dealing with the content of a particular
course. Then, it became clear that a scenario exploration represented a
great exercise to develop transferable skills beyond the classic
negotiation, communication and adaptability skills, which are highly
recognized by the job-market, such as:
Public speaking;
Debating, developing the ability to support a position or viewpoint
with argumentation and logic;
Combing and integrating information from disparate sources;
Evaluating critically a given situation;
Engaging in advocacy work;
Open-mindedness.
SES sessions have also proven very useful to evaluate students on their
ability to mobilise knowledge and skills in more realistic sets of
circumstances than traditional exams.
So far, the SES has been incorporated into the curriculum of a Bachelors’
course on European Integration at the Department of Public Governance
and Management of Ghent University. In what is a mandatory course for
third-year students, groups of volunteers act as game masters and others
as scenario explorers. The tool helps them learn about the complexity of
migration policy making at the European level. Scenario explorers are
pre-assigned roles by the teacher and are expected to study positions and
responsibilities of different migration stakeholders in advance. After the
exploration, they write a reflection paper about the experience and
lessons learned which is graded as part of their overall evaluation.
Furthermore, the Academy of Business in Society - ABIS has supported
the delivery of two SES sessions with students in higher education. The
first at Cranfield Business School as part of the Managing Corporate
Sustainability Module of the Master in Management and the second at
27
Aalto University as a session on the Sustainable Entrepreneurship Day
connected to their Sustainable Entrepreneurship course.
Both sessions differed with respect to the background context each
professor decided to use for the game. In Cranfield, each table played in
the context of an established business, which they had been studying with
their team during the course (e.g. IKEA, Zara). This approach made it
easy to identify the scenario explorers most relevant to that business and
helped the students understand the concrete societal dynamics driving
the company’s evolving business case. In particular, students appreciated
the opportunity to explore the scenario not only from the perspective of
the business, but also from that of other stakeholders such as the policy
maker, the small SME part of the value chain or the civil society
organization.
During the session hosted at Aalto University as part of the Sustainable
Entrepreneurship course, students were required to develop a scenario
exploration session based on a sustainable business model, possibly
inspired by Helsinki's entrepreneurship system.
Despite the differences between the two teaching environments it was
clear in both sessions that students experience the scenario exploration
with a pace and point of view very different from that of adults. They are
able to understand the rules of the exploration quickly and to assume
roles of scenario explorers far from their current knowledge - such as civil
society organizations or policy makers. In this regard, particularly during
the Cranfield session where most of the participants were international
students, the SES offered the opportunity to explain and discuss the
European political system at national, regional and local levels (see Figure
6).
The way in which the role of policy-maker is handled by students is
indeed one of the main differences from how adults approach scenario
exploration. Students naturally assume that established businesses have
long expanded beyond the administrative and geographical boundaries
that constrain politics (Van Vrekhem 2015). The fact that politics are still
organized nationally while companies and industries are organized
internationally was a recurrent point of discussion among the students in
each session. In contrast, adults are generally more aware of how the
political context influences business and vice versa.
Students generally showed a great enthusiasm and participation during
the SES sessions. Data from feedback surveys reveal that students
appreciated how the exploration dynamics taught them to come up with
ideas quickly and to translate those ideas into action. For some, the SES
session was an opportunity to build further ideas created during their
courses. Students valued particularly the role of the Scenario Exploration
Master in providing feedback to participants throughout the session, and
in supporting the scenario exploration and the resulting learning process.
They commented that the SES not only taught them something new
28
about sustainability, but also offered examples and inspiration of how to
apply sustainability in the multi-faceted social context of the real world.
Figure 6: Master students exploring scenarios for sustainable businesses
Secondly, as most participants had no knowledge about foresight, this
was an opportunity to provide them with an introduction about forward-
looking studies in general, showing people how scenarios can be used and
lowering the threshold of entry into this type of approaches. This has a
strong 'demystifying' effect on how people perceive foresight. It makes it
clear that while foresight is not about prediction, the Scenario Exploration
System can generate very concrete conversations about the future that
show to people the simulation value of scenarios beyond modelling or
forecasting.
7. Conditions for a successful use of the SES
Regardless of the robustness of the results and successes booked so far
with the SES platform, one has to be conscious of a number of limitations.
First and foremost, the experience is strongly dependent on the quality of
the moderation. In addition to being familiar with the scenarios, the
moderator should make an effort to build a narrative adapted to the
specific interests of the people around the table. Being able to relate the
story to current or local events familiar to the participants also increases
the 'believability' of the story. This improves the quality of the session
significantly by making it easier for participants to 'get into' the scenario
exploration.
29
If it is not already clear, the SES is a scenario exploration system, and not
a scenario-building tool. As a consequence, there are limitations to the
extent to which scenario explorer actions can change future conditions.
The exploration only takes place in the space left beyond the key
characteristics of the scenarios. The moderator must find creative ways to
accommodate the few cases when scenario explorers bump into this
limitation.
The SES can accommodate any role, but there are constraints on the
selection of sets of roles that can be used successfully: the roles need to
be sufficiently independent of each other so that each has its autonomy of
decision. For example, boss-subordinate relationships do not work.
It is difficult to hold a full session in less than 3 hours. This time is to a
large extent incompressible because the introductory phase is crucial to
make participants feel at ease and understand well enough what is
expected of them. Also, dropping the exploration of the second scenario
removes a significant part of the added value of the exercise while saving
less than 45 minutes.
Scale up requires more moderators. While a session requires a minimum
of 5 people (4 scenario explorers and one public voice) and a moderator,
there is flexibility to increase this number in two main ways. One way is
to add a few roles without having to change the rules (e.g. one more
scenario explorer, one more public voice, one or two additional
participants with a 'media' role). Another way is to attribute the roles to
teams of two or three people. Using these tricks can easily increase the
number of participants around a table, but it is not practical to go beyond
about 12-15 people. Beyond that, scaling up requires adding moderators
and running tables in parallel.
8. Conclusion
The SES was developed originally to create novel ways to make the
results from classic foresight scenario studies more accessible and useful
to people beyond those directly involved in the studies. However, the
experiences described above have showed that the tool has evolved well
beyond this scope. Overall, the range of experiences reported here have
created a body of empirical evidence that the authors believe support the
following hypothesis: by reducing the abstraction of future thinking, by
putting participants in situations in which they can make the future more
concrete, by allowing people to put their own stories and issues into
scenarios, the SES makes foresight more usable, engaging, and ultimately
playful. The authors hope that sharing this body of experience will give
others the chance of building more solid evidence to support academic
work both on the SES itself and on the usefulness of foresight gaming
systems.
30
Results from experiences with a very wide range of people from all walks
of life (the public, policy makers, business, academia, civil society
organisations, etc.), all ages and all cultures demonstrates the tool’s wide
applicability and appeal as a point of entry for engendering futures
thinking. So far, some observations have been made that can be
considered as preliminary successes in helping to create better dialogue
amongst diverse stakeholder groups, enriching strategic reflections, and
creating a space for people to engage in more systemic reflections. In this
way, the SES has proven to be a game for all seasons. As a tool, the SES
shows that participation in foresight can be both a product and a process,
which is to say that play-based approaches generate both intended and
serendipitous outcomes, which is evidenced by the growth
As mentioned above, serious games have seen an expanded adoption
across sectors during their history. From defence war-gaming, to business
strategy formulation, innovation idea generating, and now futures
research, there is an initial novelty factor that generates excitement in
early adopters of serious game methods - an excitement that carries over
from practitioners to participants who feel they are a part of something
new. A hope that maybe this technique will provide sought after answers
to complex quandaries. However, just as the polish of silverware will
wane over time as a result of its continued exposure, so to does the initial
wave of adoption and experimentation as a new approach enters into a
space. Can this be said of serious gaming’s place within a wider futures
methodology? And if so, what can be done to return the gleam, and
efficacy, of such practices?
We believe that the mutations of the SES, and various experiences
recorded and discussed above, begin to show the resilient benefits of
serious gaming in three main areas:
Facilitating and strengthening forward-looking strategic and
systemic reflection;
Facilitating engagement with a large number of stakeholders and
target audiences both in diversity and in close circles; and
Awareness raising and interactive approaches to learning about
internal and external complexity of a given subject area.
The first area has proven most beneficial in policy related contexts at the
European Commission (Bock and Bontoux, 2017).
The second area has been of most benefit for projects interested in
finding concrete ideas to solve specific issues (e.g. mobility, recycling
waste fishing nets) or to enrich the public debate about hot topics (e.g.
nanotechnologies).
31
Regarding the third area, the return on experience from two universities
(Cranfield and Ghent) also gives interesting clues on the potential of the
SES for teaching. In particular, students appreciated how the scenario
exploration dynamics taught them to come up with ideas quickly and to
translate them into action.
With each edition, interest in the SES continues to grow. At the JRC, this
work will continued to be carried out with the goal of reaching a large
enough community of proficient users (both experienced moderators and
people able to tailor the platform to different needs) such that a
community of practice develops around the SES, which will ensure that
the tool continues to serve the foresight field beyond its original scope. As
this community emerges, we are looking forward to performing a more in-
depth and longitudinal study of this foresight tool, which will also
contribute more broadly to assessing play-driven approaches at the
intersection of research and public engagement.
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