A Scenario Modeling Case in a Turbulent Market
FSG’s Peter Kennedy and Robert Avila have collaborated on a case study of a hybrid approach to country risk and market planning. The article, which is entitled, “Decision Making Under Extreme Uncertainty: Blending Quantitative Modeling and Scenario Planning,” appears in the June 2013 issue of Strategy & Leadership. The case chronicles FSG’s experience consulting for a major automotive manufacturer in Brazil. The authors describe both successes and lessons learned in helping the client deal with fundamental uncertainties it faced in a market undergoing disruptive change.
Among the key takeaways from this experience is focusing quantitative modeling on shorter-term market forecasting while using the scenario-planning tool to look expansively at longer-term structural changes in the market – political, economic, financial, regulatory, and so forth. These are typically the kinds of “forces for change” that cannot be reliably modeled. But understanding their potential impacts is essential, not just for risk-management purposes, but for competitive analysis and opportunity identification purposes as well.