Advisory Services

Scenario planning is a rigorous futures methodology enabling organizations to engage with uncertainty and ensure that strategic planning is robust across a wide range of possible future developments. It is based on the development and exploration of future scenarios—a set of plausible alternate futures in which today’s decisions may play out. These can then be used to test and improve strategy, drive innovation, and guide planning.

BSR’s Sustainable Futures Lab was created to enable foresight-driven engagement with disruptive change in order to help businesses spot emerging issues early, explore different possible futures, and develop more resilient and sustainable strategies.

We help companies catalyze action by facilitating implementation and building alignment for real world results and shared accountability.

We equip Chief Sustainability Officers, executives, and sustainability teams with the tools and insights to lead.

We help companies engage their value chains, peers, and partners to create business and societal value.

The Strategic Foresight Intensive takes a cross-functional group of business leaders through a half-day interactive workshop, led by the Director of BSR's Sustainable Futures Lab, to introduce them to the fundamentals of strategic foresight, review megatrends reshaping the landscape for business and sustainability, discuss patterns and dynamics of change, explore emerging issues confronting the business, and identify areas requiring attention. It is designed to help senior decision-makers better understand the strategic value of sustainability, learn how to do futures thinking, and prioritize issues facing the business that most require strategic foresight.

Traditional materiality assessments are a useful tool to bring clarity and alignment around sustainability priorities, but typically take a short-term perspective. A future-proofing process can be used to stress test material issues against plausible future developments in order to understand how key issues will change over time, ensure that significant emerging issues are not missed, identify potential blind spots that require attention, and develop more robust planning. For businesses that have already conducted a standard materiality assessment, this is an excellent next step to ensure that priorities are fit for the future and an easy way to start to integrate strategic foresight into sustainability strategy.

In 2017, the FSB Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) issued recommendations that public companies undertake a process of climate scenario analysis, both for understanding strategic implications of climate-related risks and opportunities and for informing stakeholders about how the organization is positioning itself in light of these risks and opportunities.

Scenario planning is a rigorous futures methodology enabling organizations to engage with uncertainty and ensure that strategic planning is robust across a wide range of possible future developments. It is based on the development and exploration of future scenarios—a set of plausible alternate futures in which today’s decisions may play out. These can then be used to test and improve strategy, drive innovation, and guide planning.

BSR’s Sustainable Futures Lab was created to enable foresight-driven engagement with disruptive change in order to help businesses spot emerging issues early, explore different possible futures, and develop more resilient and sustainable strategies.

It is designed to help senior decision-makers better understand the strategic value of sustainability, learn how to do futures thinking, and prioritize issues facing the business that most require strategic foresight.

Traditional materiality assessments are a useful tool to bring clarity and alignment around sustainability priorities, but typically take a short-term perspective. A future-proofing process can be used to stress test material issues against plausible future developments in order to understand how key issues will change over time, ensure that significant emerging issues are not missed, identify potential blind spots that require attention, and develop more robust planning.

In 2017, the FSB Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) issued recommendations that public companies undertake a process of climate scenario analysis, both for understanding strategic implications of climate-related risks and opportunities and for informing stakeholders about how the organization is positioning itself in light of these risks and opportunities. This special application of scenario planning not only provides useful information to investors, lenders, insurers, and other stakeholders, but also offers a valuable method to ensure a company’s strategy is resilient to climate-related physical, liability, and transition risks.

BSR’s Sustainable Futures Lab was created to enable foresight-driven engagement with disruptive change in order to help businesses spot emerging issues early, explore different possible futures, and develop more resilient and sustainable strategies.

Scenario planning is a rigorous futures methodology enabling organizations to engage with uncertainty and ensure that strategic planning is robust across a wide range of possible future developments. It is based on the development and exploration of future scenarios—a set of plausible alternate futures in which today’s decisions may play out. These can then be used to test and improve strategy, drive innovation, and guide planning.

The Strategic Foresight Intensive takes a cross-functional group of business leaders through a half-day interactive workshop, led by the Director of BSR's Sustainable Futures Lab, to introduce them to the fundamentals of strategic foresight, review megatrends reshaping the landscape for business and sustainability, discuss patterns and dynamics of change, explore emerging issues confronting the business, and identify areas requiring attention. It is designed to help senior decision-makers better understand the strategic value of sustainability, learn how to do futures thinking, and prioritize issues facing the business that most require strategic foresight.

Traditional materiality assessments are a useful tool to bring clarity and alignment around sustainability priorities, but typically take a short-term perspective. A future-proofing process can be used to stress test material issues against plausible future developments in order to understand how key issues will change over time, ensure that significant emerging issues are not missed, identify potential blind spots that require attention, and develop more robust planning. For businesses that have already conducted a standard materiality assessment, this is an excellent next step to ensure that priorities are fit for the future and an easy way to start to integrate strategic foresight into sustainability strategy.

BSR’s Sustainable Futures Lab was created to enable foresight-driven engagement with disruptive change in order to help businesses spot emerging issues early, explore different possible futures, and develop more resilient and sustainable strategies.

In 2017, the FSB Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) issued recommendations that public companies undertake a process of climate scenario analysis, both for understanding strategic implications of climate-related risks and opportunities and for informing stakeholders about how the organization is positioning itself in light of these risks and opportunities. This special application of scenario planning not only provides useful information to investors, lenders, insurers, and other stakeholders, but also offers a valuable method to ensure a company’s strategy is resilient to climate-related physical, liability, and transition risks.

Scenario planning is a rigorous futures methodology enabling organizations to engage with uncertainty and ensure that strategic planning is robust across a wide range of possible future developments. It is based on the development and exploration of future scenarios—a set of plausible alternate futures in which today’s decisions may play out. These can then be used to test and improve strategy, drive innovation, and guide planning.

The Strategic Foresight Intensive takes a cross-functional group of business leaders through a half-day interactive workshop, led by the Director of BSR's Sustainable Futures Lab, to introduce them to the fundamentals of strategic foresight, review megatrends reshaping the landscape for business and sustainability, discuss patterns and dynamics of change, explore emerging issues confronting the business, and identify areas requiring attention. It is designed to help senior decision-makers better understand the strategic value of sustainability, learn how to do futures thinking, and prioritize issues facing the business that most require strategic foresight.