Compare methods

	Cone of Plausibility	Seven Questions Scenario Method
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2003	1996
Originator	Charles Taylor (cone imagery); popularized and formalized by Joseph Voros	Global Business Network (GBN) and the Shell scenario tradition (Pierre Wack lineage)
Type	Scenario-framing pipeline bounding alternative futures around a baseline	Structured-interview pipeline that seeds scenario building
Seminal source	Voros, J. (2003). A generic foresight process framework. Foresight, 5(3), 10-21.	Schoemaker, P. J. H. (1995). Scenario planning: A tool for strategic thinking. Sloan Management Review, 36(2), 25-40.
Aliases	Futures Cone, Voros Futures Cone, Cone of Plausible Futures, Plausibility Cone Analysis	Seven Questions Interview, GBN Seven Questions, Shell Seven Questions, Oracle/Epitaph Interview Protocol
Related	3	3
Summary	The cone of plausibility, often called the futures cone, is a framing device for scenario work that projects a baseline 'expected' future and then bounds a widening cone of alternative futures around it by varying the key drivers and assumptions on which that baseline rests. Drawn from the present at the cone's apex, the trajectory fans out as it extends into the future, because uncertainty compounds over time and the range of futures that remain plausible grows wider the further out one looks. Joseph Voros, building on Charles Taylor's earlier cone imagery, formalized the device by nesting categories of futures — possible, plausible, probable, and preferable — within the cone, giving foresight practitioners a shared vocabulary for distinguishing what could conceivably happen from what could reasonably happen and from what is most likely. As Bishop, Hines, and Collins note in their survey of scenario techniques, the cone provides a disciplined way to generate and bound a manageable set of alternative scenarios.	The seven questions scenario method is a structured interview protocol, associated with the Global Business Network and the Shell scenario tradition, used at the front end of scenario building to surface the concerns, predetermined elements, and critical uncertainties that will seed a set of scenarios. Rather than starting from abstract drivers, facilitators interview key informants and decision-makers using a fixed sequence of seven open questions — including the famous 'oracle' question (if you could ask a clairvoyant one thing about the future, what would it be?) and the 'epitaph' question about the legacy the organization hopes to leave. The interviews draw out what people most hope for, fear, and want to know, and the analysis of those responses identifies which forces are effectively predetermined and which are genuinely uncertain. As Schoemaker's account of scenario planning and Bishop, Hines, and Collins's survey of scenario techniques both stress, separating the predetermined from the uncertain is the pivot on which good scenarios turn.