How To Develop Scenarios?
To develop alternative scenarios of the future of housing and care for older adults in Canada, we used a standard strategic foresight methodology. We employed the methodology by convening the Building with Mission Steering Committee over the course of three workshops to bring together the expertise of healthcare delivery providers, affordable housing developers, mission-driven organizations and human-centred design methodologists.
Workshop One: Future Trends & Drivers of Change
The first workshop set the stage and established a framework for the scenario development process. We introduced, explored, and reviewed key emerging sector trends and drivers of change in the space at the intersection of housing, health(care), and aging. The trends were originally identified through secondary research, subject matter knowledge and a futures survey. The survey was distributed broadly to people in the Building with Mission network and received over 30 detailed responses from organizations.
Read more about Trends and Drivers
Read more about Insights from the Survey that touch on the Pandemic’s impact on Aging, Housing and Care
Workshop Two: Critical Uncertainties
In workshop two, we prioritized the drivers of change to identify those that were most critical to addressing unmet needs in affordable housing and care for seniors and also the most uncertain.
Importance: Which trends matter most to the problem/opportunity the Building With Mission project is addressing: “How might mission-driven healthcare delivery organizations expand the range and supply of affordable housing for aging Canadians?”
Uncertainty: Which trends carry the most uncertainty about how they might evolve? The reasons for uncertainty are usually based on uncertainty in the external/macro-environment such as consumer beliefs, government policies, or plays made by other actors in this space.
Trends that emerged as both highly important and highly uncertain were termed “critical uncertainties”.
Read more about Critical Uncertainties
Workshop Three: Alternative Future Scenarios
In the final workshop, we built on the content generated in the previous two workshops to develop four alternative scenarios of how the future may unfold in the housing, healthcare, and aging space in Canada. We did this by extrapolating how the most critical and uncertain trends and drivers (critical uncertainties) could play out over the next 10+ years and exploring the spectrum of possibilities.
Scenarios are a powerful way to initiate dialogue and build alignment on how we prepare for the future.We expect that these four scenarios will be helpful for mission-driven healthcare delivery organizations as they contemplate expanding their mission into housing.
