Woody Wade is a specialist in scenario planning, helping organizations recognize and understand the critical uncertainties that have the greatest potential to change their future “business landscape” – and thus affect their long-term success.

To accomplish this, he uses a fascinating structured approach that enables a management team to visualize different ways their future strategic landscape could unfold for them. These so-called “scenarios,” each one plausible and compelling in its own way, provide valuable insights that can help the team identify opportunities and challenges in advance and if necessary adjust their strategic plan accordingly.

In 2012, Woody’s first book Scenario Planning: A Field Guide to the Future was published by John Wiley & Sons, the largest publisher of business books in the USA. The book’s Japanese edition became a bestseller in that country, even occupying the No. 1 spot on Amazon’s list of books on society and remaining among the top ten business books sold in Japan for several weeks.  Since then, he has published several other books on foreseeing the future in terms of alternative scenarios, as well as a more tongue-in-cheek look at how the future might turn out entitled World Review 2036: Eyewitness Reports from the Future.

Woody regularly conducts scenario-building workshops for organizations of all kinds and is invited to present his foresight methodology at conferences all over the world – some 35 countries so far.  He is also an adjunct professor at Rochester Institute of Technology’s Dubai campus, teaching in its Master’s program in Future Foresight.

Based in Switzerland since graduating with an MBA from Harvard Business School, Woody has worked for a number of high-profile organizations there. He was a member of the Executive Board of the World Economic Forum and worked in private banking in Zurich. As the Director of Marketing at the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne, the world’s no. 1 ranked school of hospitality management, he gained particular insights into the futures facing the hotel and tourism industries, as well as institutions of higher education.

He runs his one-man consulting firm Wade and Co. SA from his home in the Lavaux.

Woodywade.com