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\nI do a lot of work with scenarios as tools to help drive innovative thinking. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t use them to forecast the future\u00e2\u20ac\u201dforecasting is impossible. I do use them to explore many plausible futures, none of which actually come true, but some unforeseeable amalgam usually does. <\/p>\n
I start with STEP factors (social, technological, economic, and political factors). The more tactical the scenario’s focus the less important political factors become.<\/p>\n
Often a change in one of these factors ripples out into the others. Sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes this truggers a chain reaction, manifesting otherwise latent possibilities. Here’s a super crude example I cooked up in about 15 minutes. It about the shrinking size and cost of industrial manufacturing capability. But let’s start with some STEP factors.<\/p>\n
Social<\/strong> Technological<\/strong> So, 3D scanners can be used to auto generate CAD files of things. These files can then be downloaded over the net into local rapid manufacturing machines. Start costs for these machines are about the same as a modest car. These machines then physically reproduce the original artifact for roughly the same unit cost as industrial mass production can. And if the stock item isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite what you need? No problem, have the CAD file tweaked to make your own unique item for the same price.<\/p>\n
\nHaving reliably satisfied many of Maslow\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s needs many North Americans focus more on self-actualizing and self-expression. Evidence of this is our attitude towards work: we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want a job, we want fulfillment. This affects how we buy things and the kinds of things we buy. Mass produced homogeneity is increasingly anathema to North American consumers. We want to see ourselves in the artifacts we buy, not some generic corporation. And more importantly we want other to see us in these artifacts, with a product\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s semiotic function becoming more important than its functional function.<\/p>\n
\nAdvances in manufacturing technologies are now to the point of delivering mass industrial manufacturing capability to a micro level (1<\/a>, 2<\/a>, 3<\/a>). Such advances have also shrunk the associated costs as well, providing industrial production unit cost structures together with the customization of local craftsmanship. These technologies have already hit the marketplace in the UK with a furniture company call Unto The Last<\/a>, that delivers made to order furniture at Ikea prices.<\/p>\n