In crisis management, scenario planning is a necessity in our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world. Strategic planners need to be able to imagine future environments even in the most uncertain conditions. The scale of potential scenarios and associated management suggests that those involved will require innovative planning techniques. To support innovation in strategic planning, we have combined the research on creativity, divergent thinking, and creative constraints to design a method called “Stretch‐Thinking Loops.” This technique uses iterative thinking approaches that identify broad scenarios, the likely consequences, and the potential constraints, and then uses this information to identify new opportunities and innovations to support scenario planning. We report on the development of this technique in the context of crisis management and its application in a collaborative project with an Australian State Government that explored a series of post‐COVID‐19 recovery scenarios for a 12‐month time horizon. The proposed Stretch‐Thinking Loops are not just limited to crisis management but offer all organizations a structured method to enhance their capability to engage in divergent‐thinking for future scenario planning.

中文翻译：

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延伸思维循环：场景规划的新技术

在危机管理中，在瞬息万变，不确定，复杂和模棱两可的世界中，方案规划是必不可少的。战略规划师需要即使在最不确定的条件下也能够想象未来的环境。潜在方案和相关管理的规模表明，所涉及的人员将需要创新的规划技术。为了支持战略规划中的创新，我们将对创造力，分歧思维和创造力约束的研究相结合，设计了一种名为“拉伸思考循环”的方法。该技术使用迭代思维方法来识别广泛的方案，可能的后果和潜在的限制，然后使用此信息来识别支持方案规划的新机会和创新。我们在危机管理的背景下报告了该技术的发展及其在与澳大利亚州政府的合作项目中的应用，该项目探讨了在COVID-19之后的一系列十二个月时间内的恢复方案。拟议的“延伸思考循环”不仅限于危机管理，还为所有组织提供了一种结构化的方法，可以增强他们参与未来情景规划的分散思考的能力。