Ron Bradfield

Cognitive barriers in the scenario development process

The literature on scenario planning can be neatly divided into two broad categories: (a) anecdotal, practitioner oriented articles that describe how scenario planning has been undertaken in organizations, its espoused benefits, and experienced-based advice on how to construct scenarios and (b) articles that are more academic and analytical in that they attempt to provide a theoretical underpinning for scenarios based on a small body of empirical studies of related topics. It is this second category, the empirical studies of related topics that this article focuses on, in particular, research findings from the cognitive psychology domain in terms of how knowledge is organized and activated in the human mind, cognitive simplification processes, and inductive versus deductive thinking. A research project focusing on the scenario development process is described and the preliminary findings related to the impact of these cognitive phenomena in terms of learning barriers in the development process is discussed.

Four scenarios for the future of the pharmaceutical industry

Pharmaceutical companies are facing several major interrelated challenges, the most strategic being the decline in R&D productivity resulting in empty product pipelines to replace products nearing patent expiry. A common response has been mergers and acquisition of competitors and biotechnology firms, but rather than resolving the problems, this has created new ones. While biotechnology promises to reshape the pharmaceutical industry, it too faces challenges: the industry as a whole is unprofitable and there is uncertainty regarding market acceptance of its products. This paper examines the current issues in the two industries, and describes a scenario process resulting in the development of a set of scenarios depicting four possible future paths along which the pharmaceutical industry may develop over the next 15 years.

The Psychology of why organisations can be slow to adapt and change

This article discusses what can be done about bias in human decision making to make organizations adapt to change. In conclusion, individuals follow cognitive habits, seeing challenging situations through a singular frame of reference that makes assumptions about the nature of problems or opportunities that arise. Additionally, we feel that our judgment is good. Furthermore, this perception is reinforced by both the confirmation bias and the hindsight bias that underpin an inappropriate confidence in our judgment. Such over-confidence will lead to inappropriate best-guess thinking about the future--as illustrated in our earlier case studies of strategic inertia or business-as-usual thinking. Our analysis illustrated that the risks were perceived to be serious if the company did not change its current failing strategy and, also, that the risks were seen to be serious if the company did change the strategy. There was strong evidence that the senior management team attempted to shift responsibility for its adherence to the current strategy to the top level board of directors--that is, buck passing. Additionally, the management team also evidenced delay and procrastination--whilst bolstering the current failing strategy