Backcasting for Strategy

Part of the work on exploring backcasting has been to understand the actual process people use to create their hypothesis that will lead to indicators and/or boundary conditions. The process ties together the freedom the group can have to define their desired future and also allows mid-course corrections within the boundaries – harder when you’re working with scenarios.

The act of mapping the boundary conditions has been called here creativity within constrains and compared to a game of chess: you know the rules that would finish the game, but don’t know the strategy to get there. The act of simplification without reductionism is still running around my mind since the game of chess is not what I think could represent a complex system. And I’m not alone.

The question is: would it give us a good hint to plan strategically within a complex system? If yes, what would be the process to define the rules of the game in such a way we create the best hypothesis possible?