Global Business Network (GBN) was a leading

consulting firm A consulting firm or simply consultancy is a professional service firm that provides expertise and specialised labour for a fee, through the use of consultants. Consulting firms may have one employee or thousands; they may consult in a broad ran ...

that specialized in helping organizations to adapt and grow in an uncertain and volatile world. The firm was particularly well-known for using tools such as

scenario planning Scenario planning, scenario thinking, scenario analysis, scenario prediction and the scenario method all describe a strategic planning method that some organizations use to make flexible long-term plans. It is in large part an adaptation and gene ...

and also offered

experiential learning Experiential learning (ExL) is the process of learning through experience, and is more narrowly defined as "learning through reflection on doing". Hands-on learning can be a form of experiential learning, but does not necessarily involve students ...

with networks of experts and futurists (dubbed "Remarkable People", or RPs). GBN advised businesses, non-profits and governments on how to address critical challenges and anticipate possible trends that could shape the future. Originally an independent firm, GBN became part of the

Monitor Group Monitor Deloitte is the multinational strategy consulting practice of Deloitte Consulting. Monitor Deloitte specializes in providing strategy consultation services to the senior management of major organizations and governments. It helps its clien ...

in 2000, which was then in turn acquired by Deloitte. GBN was based in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, and had offices in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, and

Cambridge, Massachusetts Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. As part of the Greater Boston, Boston metropolitan area, the cities population of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the fourth most ...

History

GBN was founded in

Berkeley, California Berkeley ( ) is a city on the eastern shore of San Francisco Bay in northern Alameda County, California, United States. It is named after the 18th-century Irish bishop and philosopher George Berkeley. It borders the cities of Oakland and Emer ...

, in 1987 by a group of

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

s including Peter Schwartz, Jay Ogilvy,

Stewart Brand Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the autho ...

, Napier Collyns, and Lawrence Wilkinson. The company grew to include a core group of "practice members", and over a hundred individual network members (or "RPs") from a range of different fields, such as ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San Fran ...

'' editor Kevin Kelly, social media expert

Clay Shirky Clay Shirky (born 1964) is an American writer, consultant and teacher on the social and economic effects of Internet technologies and journalism. In 2017 he was appointed Vice Provost of Educational Technologies of New York University (NYU), aft ...

, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, economist Aidan Eyakuze, musician

Brian Eno Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno (; born Brian Peter George Eno, 15 May 1948) is a British musician, composer, record producer and visual artist best known for his contributions to ambient music and work in rock, pop an ...

, biotechnologist Rob Carlson, and China scholar Orville Schell. For its first 15 years, corporate clients would pay an annual subscription of up to $40,000 to become members of GBN's "Worldview". In return, they received exposure to the network of experts, were invited to workshops and interactive meetings to explore emerging trends and alternative futures, while gaining access to training seminars, a private website, and the GBN Book Club, offering a selection of literature about future issues each month. After its acquisition by Monitor in 2000, GBN soon stopped offering this membership service, concentrating instead on scenario-based consulting and training. Before GBN, Peter Schwartz had been employed at

SRI International SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit organization, nonprofit scientific research, scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as ...

as director of the Strategic Environment Center; following that, he took a position as head of

Royal Dutch/Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New ...

, from 1982 to 1986, where he continued the pioneering work of

Pierre Wack Pierre is a masculine given name. It is a French form of the name Peter. Pierre originally meant "rock" or "stone" in French (derived from the Greek word πέτρος (''petros'') meaning "stone, rock", via Latin "petra"). It is a translation ...

in the field of scenario planning. GBN ceased to be an active entity following the acquisition of the

Deloitte Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited (), commonly referred to as Deloitte, is an international professional services network headquartered in London, England. Deloitte is the largest professional services network by revenue and number of professio ...

in January 2013.

Scenario planning

Unlike

forecasting Forecasting is the process of making predictions based on past and present data. Later these can be compared (resolved) against what happens. For example, a company might estimate their revenue in the next year, then compare it against the actual ...

which extrapolates past and present trends to predict the future,

is a process for exploring alternative, plausible, possible futures and what those might mean for strategies, policies, and decisions. Scenario planning was first used by the military in

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and then by

Herman Kahn Herman Kahn (February 15, 1922 – July 7, 1983) was a founder of the Hudson Institute and one of the preeminent futurists of the latter part of the twentieth century. He originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems the ...

RAND The RAND Corporation (from the phrase "research and development") is an American nonprofit global policy think tank created in 1948 by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces. It is financed ...

(“Thinking the Unthinkable”) during the Cold War, before being adapted to inform

corporate strategy In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of Resource management, resour ...

by Pierre Wack and other business strategists at Royal Dutch/Shell in the 1970s. The key principles of scenario planning include thinking from the outside in about the forces in the contextual environment that are driving change, engaging multiple perspectives to identify and interpret those forces, and adopting a long view.

History

Scenario planning

References

Further reading