Compare methods

	Normative Scenario Backcasting	Intuitive Logics Scenario Planning
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1990	1995
Originator	John B. Robinson	SRI International / Royal Dutch Shell tradition; Paul J. H. Schoemaker (codification)
Type	Goal-oriented pipeline constructing a milestone pathway backward from a desired future image	Deductive scenario-construction pipeline using two critical uncertainties
Seminal source	Robinson, J. B. (1990). Futures under glass: A recipe for people who hate to predict. Futures, 22(8), 820-842.	Schoemaker, P. J. H. (1995). Scenario planning: A tool for strategic thinking. Sloan Management Review, 36(2), 25-40.
Aliases	Normative Backcasting, Scenario Backcasting, Goal-Oriented Backcasting, Desired-Future Backcasting	Intuitive Logics, 2x2 Scenario Matrix, Deductive Scenario Method, SRI Scenario Planning
Related	4	3
Summary	Normative scenario backcasting inverts the usual direction of futures work: instead of projecting forward from the present to ask what is likely, it starts from an explicit image of a desired future and works backward to construct the path of milestones, conditions, and actions that would lead there. John Robinson introduced the approach in 1990 as a method for people who 'hate to predict,' arguing that when the goal is to assess whether and how a normatively preferred future could be reached, forecasting the probable is the wrong tool. Backcasting instead asks what would have to happen, in what order, for the desired endpoint to come about. Distinct from generic policy backcasting, the normative scenario variant centres on first articulating a rich, value-laden scenario image of the endpoint and then deriving the pathway from it. As Bishop, Hines and Collins note in their survey of scenario techniques, this goal-driven logic makes backcasting a natural partner to scenario methods wherever the aim is not to anticipate the future but to deliberately work toward a chosen one.	Intuitive logics is the most widely used family of scenario-planning methods, in which a small set of internally consistent, plausible stories about the future is constructed deductively from a few critical uncertainties. Rooted in the practice pioneered at SRI International and at Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s, and codified for strategic thinking by Paul Schoemaker in his 1995 Sloan Management Review article, the approach asks a planning team to identify the driving forces shaping a focal decision, rank them by how much they matter and how uncertain they are, and select two critical uncertainties that become the orthogonal axes of a two-by-two matrix. The four quadrants define four contrasting but coherent futures, each developed into a narrative. The aim is not to predict but to stretch managers' mental models and to stress-test strategy against a manageable spread of qualitatively different worlds.