USI 2009 Session

The feedback session will take place on Thursday, July 2nd from 5:30 pm till 6:30 pm. It will inform you about what was exchanged between the DSI. 

The current economic crisis shows us that we can no longer predict the future. But does this mean we are condemned to living in the present? We don’t think so, since uncertainty is becoming such that we need to prepare ourselves for the future, not try to predict it. Luc de Brabandère, Associate Director at BCG, has developed a preparation method based on scenarios that he has already used successfully in many companies. 

IS divisions face uncertainty. While some trends seem certain (an aging population, an increasing maturity of employees using an IS, process digitization, open systems, etc.), trends having a high impact but with a high degree of uncertainty require that we define scenarios. Because, what would happen if users refused to pay for software maintenance? If governments banned offshore outsourcing? Or if the economic crisis went on and on, and the SEC allowed ERP publishers to concentrate, or if all software became open source? etc. 

During this feedback session, we will explore four scenarios describing the world in the year 2020 and the consequences on the IT ecosystem. This exploration should help us define winning strategies for IS divisions as well as some things we can do right away to prepare. 

Shell, under the leadership of Arie de Gueus, was the first company to use the scenario approach on a large scale (top 200 managers) in the late 1970s. Shell continues to develop scenarios and makes them public.