The Business Report, apparently carried in several South African newspapers, has an article reporting the use of scenario planning including the titles of various possible outcomes or endstates. The original work in the 1990s was done by Peter Schwartz and GBN, a well known scenario planning firm. Snippets:
While their elders agonised, a group of bright young South Africans said it was all very simple: select a "dual carriageway", in which strong economic growth runs parallel to the deliberate development of disadvantaged people and communities.
This was the conclusion of a scenario planning exercise, South Africa 2020: Creating the Future. The workshops were hosted by the Montfleur Conference Centre in Stellenbosch.
A team of 29 young professionals identified paths that South Africa might take between now and 2020. As with the original Montfleur scenarios in the early 1990s, the participants came up with titles that captured the essence of the scenarios.
There was the Dead End of kleptocracy, greed, corruption and self-serving leadership; the Sharp Right Turn, where strong leadership focused only on high economic growth which was elitist and led to growing inequalities amid rising poverty; the Slow Puncture, characterised by wasted opportunities because a conservative leadership made only incremental changes and took no decisive steps to reduce inequalities; and All Aboard the Dual Carriageway, where a nation boldly led at all levels rose to the twin challenges of growth and development.
The carriageway argument broadly makes sense, but the press release I saw contained no road signs about what to do once on the track, which could mean that it could end up going nowhere.