Robust Strategic Planning: Using Scenario Planning and Fuzzy Inference System

Time and uncertainty play a crucial role in the strategic planning process [1]. Many industries have collapsed or been knocked out of the competition due to unforeseen able changes in the environment and their forecast about the future failed. Organizations are faced with unpredictable changes in new technologies, products and market places and their planned strategies are not able to respond to such a dynamic and changeable environment. These sorts of pressures are increasing in future because of the rapid developments of technology, economics and community. Needless to say, the future is not predictable but it is noteworthy that organizations can prepare themselves to face such changes and this readiness results in competitive advantages. The more the uncertainties, the more considerable the competitive advantages of organizations devised robust and stable strategies against uncertainty will be. This paper aims at introducing a method that enables organizations to draw up robust strategies in uncertain situations and leads to formulation of strategies to immunize them against environment changes. The method put forth in this paper has combined 'scenario planning method' and 'fuzzy inference system' with traditional strategic planning by adopting a novel and creative approach. Using the values of uncertain factors in the external environment, this method designs some probable forthcoming scenarios of the organization and then based on fuzzy information defined by experts for fuzzy inference systems, defines a robust strategy to deal with the designed scenarios. This method assists a manager and an organizational strategic planner in their evaluations of future environment and provides them with deep understanding of their planned strategies to keep their competitive advantages in the unstable and unsettled future.