Current post
Participatory scenario planning
2. Tanja Hichert (biography)
3. Nadia Sitas (biography)
By Maike Hamann, Tanja Hichert and Nadia Sitas
Within the many different ways of developing scenarios, what are useful general procedures for participatory processes? What resources are required? What are the strengths and weaknesses of involving stakeholders?
Scenarios are vignettes or narratives of possible futures, and when used in a set, usually depict purposefully divergent visions of what the future may hold. The point of scenario planning is not to predict the future, but to explore its uncertainties. Scenario development has a long history in corporate and military strategic planning, and is also commonly used in global environmental assessments to link current decision-making to future impacts. Participatory scenario planning extends scenario development into the realm of stakeholder-engaged research.
In general, the process for participatory scenario planning broadly follows three phases.
Recent posts
A responsible approach to intersectionality
By Ellen Lewis and Anne Stephens
2. Anne Stephens (biography)
What is intersectionality? How can it be used systemically and responsibly?
When you google the term over 66,400,000 results are returned. It is a term used by government and businesses, as well as change agents. But is it helpful and are there ways that we should be thinking about intersectionality and its inclusion in our everyday lives?
After describing intersectionality, we introduce a framework for systemic intersectionality that brings together issues that arise within three social dimensions: gender equality, environments and marginalised voices. We refer to this as the GEMs framework.
Improving cross-disciplinary collaboration with strategy knotworking and ecocycle planning
By Nancy White
How can cross-disciplinary teams improve their project results and cross-team learning, especially when they are part of a portfolio of funded projects?
I have worked with cross disciplinary teams in international agriculture development, ecosystems management and mental health. For the most part, these are externally funded initiatives and have requirements both for results (application of the work) and for cross-team learning. Often there is not useful clarity about how funder and grantee agendas work in sync. And there is rarely opportunity or support for shared optimization and exploration across different portfolios of funded work.
Dealing with differences in interests through principled negotiation
By Gabriele Bammer
How can the interests of a diverse group of researchers and stakeholders tackling a complex societal problem be understood and managed?
Interests arise when a person has a stake in something and stands to gain or lose depending on what happens to that something:
- researchers commonly have a stake in advancing their work and careers,
- stakeholders affected by a societal problem generally have a stake in improving the problem, and
- stakeholders in a position to do something about a problem generally have a stake in improving outcomes for the problem through their sphere of influence.
Interests relate not only to personal conditions or stakes (self-interest), but also to principles such as reducing inequities and promoting justice.
Creative destruction
By Keith McCandless
My favorite part of working with groups is helping people notice and stop counterproductive behavior. We all have self-limiting individual and group behaviors. Of course, they are easier to spot in others than in ourselves. So, finding seriously fun ways to help people discover for themselves what they can stop doing is important.
I use an activity called TRIZ from Liberating Structures. The purpose of TRIZ is to:
- Make it possible to speak the unspeakable and get skeletons out of the closet
- Make space for innovation
- Lay the ground for creative destruction by doing the hard work in a fun way
- TRIZ may be used before or in place of visioning sessions
- Build trust by acting all together to remove barriers.
Highlighted posts
How can we amplify impact to foster transformative change?
By David P. M. Lam
How can the impact of sustainability and other initiatives be scaled or amplified to achieve transformative change?
There are hundreds of promising sustainability initiatives emerging around the world. A sustainability initiative is, for example, a local food initiative from citizens and farmers who promote healthy and organic food production and consumption. Another example is the installation of solar panels by a community to support the use of renewable energies. Such initiatives provide potential solutions for urgent sustainability problems, for instance, biodiversity loss, climate change, social injustice, and poverty in rural areas or cities.
This blog post is based on a review of the literature to understand how sustainability transformations research is currently conceptualizing the scaling or amplifying of impact from initiatives. Although our focus was on sustainability, the processes are likely to also be pertinent for other initiatives.
Why do we protect ourselves from unknown unknowns?
By Bem Le Hunte
Why do very few people enjoy sitting comfortably with their unknown unknowns? Why is there an uncomfortable liminality ‘betwixt and between’ the known and unknown worlds?
How can we explore unknowns in a more speculative, playful, creative capacity, through our imaginations? How can we use lack of knowledge to learn about ourselves and let it teach us how to be comfortable and curious in the midst of unknowing?
The power and allure of unknown unknowns have long been recognised by creative practitioners as a holy grail for inspiration. Borges wrote in The Library of Babel about a fictitious library where all books ever written existed together, but this library turns to a dystopia as the reader discovers that “the certainty that everything has already been written annuls us, or renders us phantasmal.” And in those endless corridors lined with books the suicides begin…
For creative practitioners, the art of not knowing (and simultaneously expressing what you do know with confidence) is a careful balancing act.
Outbreaks, break-outs and break-times: Creating caring online workshops
By The Care Operative
How can online workshops be productive, engaging, caring and fun? How can researchers creatively adapt to a ‘virtual normal’ and develop caring and co-operative ways of working?
In March 2020, we – 20 international sustainability science colleagues – were prohibited from meeting face-to-face by COVID-19-related travel restrictions. Yet, we had time blocked out and a detailed workshop schedule. Within 48 hours, with invaluable help from experienced facilitator Concepción Piñeiro, we shifted the workshop online, adapting for virtual collaboration.
Here, we share how we made our online workshop productive, engaging and caring.
Acknowledging and responding to criticisms of interdisciplinarity / Reconnaître et répondre aux critiques de l’interdisciplinarité
A French version of this post is available
What are the core arguments that critics of interdisciplinarity employ? Which of these criticisms can help to clarify what interdisciplinarity is and what it isn’t?
While some of the criticisms of interdisciplinarity stem from a general misunderstanding of its purpose or from a bad experience, others seem well-founded. Thus, while some must be rejected, others should be accepted.
I outline five different types of criticisms drawn from three main sources: