MICMAC Structural Analysis

MICMAC — Matrice d'Impacts Croises Multiplication Appliquee a un Classement, or Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to a Classification — is the structural-analysis tool at the front of Michel Godet's la prospective method. Developed by Godet with Jean-Claude Duperrin, it starts from a square matrix in which experts record the direct influence of each system variable on every other, then raises that matrix to successive powers to uncover the indirect influences that propagate along chains of variables. Summing the rows and columns of the iterated matrix yields each variable's overall influence and dependence, and plotting variables on the influence-dependence plane sorts them into driving (key) variables, dependent (result) variables, relay variables, and autonomous variables. The purpose is not prediction but diagnosis: to reveal which hidden variables truly drive the system, so that later scenario work focuses on the factors that matter.