Chong Gao Learning Log

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Learning Log

Scenario is a new way of thinking of complicated affairs, especially the ones in business. Because of the unique method for achieving the goals, scenario thinking makes complex object simple and clear, and thus leads us to a logical way to find the numerous clues (it seems to be), and get them categorized. Thereafter, based on the clues, which we call “uncertainties” as term, we can then get out some most important ones of them to get the key uncertainties. Following those key uncertainties, it tends possible for us now to “forecast” the future. At last, the scenarios will be stated in some stories developed from the key uncertainties.

The paragraph above is a brief introduction for what I know about scenario thinking. And in following paragraphs, it records the details of what I have learned from the course. By the way, to explain clearly how well I know about it and what the shock it brings to me, I would like to show the idea in exactly the same steps as that I followed to complete the project.

Step 1: finding all the questions related to the subject. Actually, there is not much to talk about this one. But there are some points for us to grab. As the basis of the whole project, this step is though not quite difficult to complete, yet it is of great importance to the overall process. We found totally 62 questions to support the following steps, which proved that the more you collect here the better and easier you will go on thereafter. And I will talk about how the questions and answers helped us in later steps combined with the specific instances.

Step 2: finding the driving forces.

This is the first technical job. Based on the questions as well as the answers we found in last step, the job here is to categorize the questions and summarize each category. Thereafter, we will be able to conclude driving forces from the categories and summaries.

Take our subject “The Future of the Internet in China” for example. The four questions we found in step 1 are “How much do people enjoy entertainment on Internet?”, “How much do people shop on Internet?”, “How much do people communicate with each other on Internet?”, and “How long does a family surf on Internet per week?”.Then we searched on Internet to find the answers: Chinese people spend 13.4 hours per week on Internet. Now there are a lot of people playing online games. And there is a tendency that more and more people are joining in it. Up to now the figure is 20,000,000. According to the recent survey by CNNIC, in the past year 33.8% of Internet users shopped on Internet. And the figure for this year is 40.7%, which shows the sharp rise of population shopping online. The figure of Internet users in 2004 was 94,000,000.When comes to 2005, CNNIC forecasts that the users amount will grow to 120,000,000. Basically, all users have the will to communicate via Internet, or say communication is the basic demand of all the Internet users. We put these four questions into a category and from that we saw the tendency that more and more Chinese people use internet to entertain themselves. So we safely concluded the tendency as “Chinese people's increasing leisure time”. And we also worked out the other 9 driving forces in the same way later on. It is not until then had we began to understand why professor ask us “to find questions as much as possible”. Furthermore, the outstanding question-finding job gave us advantages all through the project.

Step 3: mapping the driving forces.

We followed professor’s instruction to this step. As to the map, I would like to say it is the most complex item in the whole project and also we are really proud of it.

The picture above is the photo of our map. Generally, there are two major parts on it. The left part focuses on societal, economical and political uncertainties. By contrast, the technological uncertainties occupy the right part. Meanwhile, there are numerous lines between the two parts as well as within each part.

On the map we can see some uncertainties are connected by more lines to outside than the others. And those high line-density ones are probably the key uncertainties, because they can influence almost all the other uncertainties.

By the way, it is a better way to draw map on a big paper than to make it on computer, for we need to walk around to see the map from different points of views. Therefore, we will not neglect what we miss from one point of view but important to the entire project. For instance, when we voted for the key uncertainties in our minds, at first we focused a lot on the left side because it is clearer than the other side. But when we followed professor’s advise and walked further and saw in a long distance, we found the “mess” on the right is not real mess. At last, we found the dominant uncertainty-”Chinese IPv6”, which became a surprise in the final scenarios.

Step 4: simplified system map.

Since we did pretty well in last steps, it was not a difficult mission to simplify the system map. At first, however, we decided the wrong key factors, so as we went on to draw up the diagram we got lost. Thank to professor’s great help, finally we got back to the right way based on the two key factors.

This Simplified System Diagram shows clearly the relationship and mutual influence between each two of them. Meanwhile, the three major parts in the map are illustrated in this diagram, too.

Step 5: finding key uncertainties and make scenarios. This is also the final step, and the production of this step is also the goal of the project. Based on the vote, we decided three key uncertainties- IPV6, China’s economy and Situation at Taiwan straight. Instead of the traditional way to work out scenarios, we learned a comparatively new way to achieve that from professor. Since we have three key uncertainties and the aim is to work out up to four scenarios, we put all the three into a matrix. We ticked in the blanks, and finally the items ticked composed four scenarios. The job had not been done until we elaborated each scenario with certain story that we made up all around the key uncertainties as cores.

To sum up, by practicing the 5 steps mentioned above, I got to know the specific process of carrying out a scenario project. But more important thing I have learned from class is the method of thinking of a complex business. Though it seems not obviously helpful when using Scenario Thinking to deal with simple business, yet when it comes to a complicated one the method shows its power. A common difficulty for people to work on the business with great complexity tends to be what logic they should follow. And Scenario thinking is just the logic which people can follow to achieve goals without worrying about getting lost.