ساختار در خلاقیت: مطالعه اکتشافی برای تجزیه و تحلیل اثرات ابزار ساختاری بر نتایج سناریویی تولید کارگاه

Scenario projects increasingly combine quantitative models with qualitative, participatory products in order to make scenarios more coherent, relevant, credible and creative. A major advantage of adding participatory, qualitative scenarios is their ability to produce creative, innovative, non-linear products. Integrating participatory results with quantitative models, however, can lower their credibility of both products when they are not consistent. The low level of structure in most participatory output limits possibilities for linking them to quantitative models. More structure could be introduced, but this might hamper the creativity of the workshop results: outcomes (process) and outputs (storylines). This paper tests a new method to analyse the creativity of scenario storylines in order to analyse the effects of structuring tools on the creativity of workshop results. Both the perceptions of participants and the resulting storylines of nine case studies across Europe are used in the analysis. Results show that the use of structuring tools can have a negative effect on the creativity of the workshop, but the influence seems to vary between the different tools. The study shows the benefit of using indicators for the scenario quality criteria. More research is needed to develop indicators for other scenario quality criteria, to improve those developed here and to study the impact of structuring tools with a larger data set.

The world is becoming increasingly complex, which makes it hard, if not impossible, to predict what the future will bring us. Scenarios are frequently used to increase our understanding of the future when uncertainty is high [1], [2], [3] and [4]. They capture a range of uncertainties by describing and analysing a set of possible futures, instead of trying to predict one single outcome [1] and [3]. Commonly, qualitative stories are developed – often in a participatory manner – to explore future uncertainties in socio-economic, cultural, political and institutional aspects as linked to environmental factors (e.g. [5], [6], [7] and [8]). Models are used to enhance this information and are especially well suited to study the linkages between environmental factors and demonstrate their impacts [9], [10], [11] and [12]. Both types of scenarios have their advantages and disadvantages [13]. In order to create scenarios that incorporate the best of both types they are often developed together (e.g. [10], [14], [15], [16] and [17]). As the input from policy makers and other stakeholders is mainly in the storylines and the input from scientists and experts mainly in models, it is important that these products are linked (e.g. [18], [19] and [20]). Discrepancies between the products may lower the trust of stakeholders in models and the credibility and scientific status of the overall results. Furthermore, limited exchange between stakeholders and experts leads to a loss of ‘negotiated science’ [21] and social learning [22]. One way of combining qualitative and quantitative scenarios is by using the Story and Simulation (SAS) approach [18]. In this iterative process, storylines and model results are compared and revised until both products are consistent. A range of potential problems inhibits a complete link between models and storylines, among others related to time and resource limitations and differences in system description [10] and [13]. An important problem, which is highlighted in this paper, is related to the low level of structure of the qualitative output. Due to the rather unstructured and vague output of many participatory workshops, quantification of the storylines remains difficult. A number of studies have defined criteria for the quality of scenarios (e.g. [23], [24], [25] and [26]). Most of them mention credibility and creativity. A scenario needs to be credible to have impact; if they are not credible, people will discard them. At the same time, scenarios should be creative to challenge current views and provoke new ideas [19] and [24]. Alcamo and Henrichs [24] state that: “the SAS approach produces credible results because it can incorporate state-of the art computer models for generating numerical information about environmental changes and their driving forces and for checking the consistency of qualitative scenarios.” In other words, the credibility of scenarios increases if storylines and models are better linked. We hypothesise that a more structured output from the participatory process enhances the link between qualitative and quantitative scenarios in the SAS approach. Structuring qualitative output therefore increases the credibility and, consequently, the quality of scenarios. Structure is difficult to define but links to aspects like the number of rules, internal consistency and explicitness. Vervoort et al. [27] added aspects that link to structure in their criteria for capturing Complex Adaptive Systems, such as showing systems connectedness and feedbacks and transferability of methods to other scenario exercises and contexts. In short, structure can be linked to credibility, internal consistency, explicitness and whether or not there are clear underlying rules and assumptions. In scenario literature, creativity is one of the quality criteria, an overview of which is given by van Vliet [20]. Different authors address different reasons for the need of including creativity as a criterion. Most argue that creativity is needed to challenge mental models and perceptions of the future (e.g. [19], [24] and [28]). Scenarios are creative when they: • Provoke new, creative thinking [24] and [29]. • Are thought-provoking and surprising [19], [24] and [27]. • Challenge current views about the future [24] and [28]. • Inform about the implications of uncertainty [24]. • Are not simple variations on the same theme [28] and [30]. • Widen the range of alternatives considered [19]. • Help to overcome the availability bias [31]. Most of the authors also look at the actual use of scenarios, for instance in methods like scenario analysis [32] or scenario planning [33] and [34]. We limit ourselves to the role of creativity during the participatory scenario development workshops. Most of the mentioned aspects of creativity are rather difficult to analyse. This is due to both the lack of literature and methods on how to study creativity and the fact that creativity encompasses a wide variety of aspects ranging from ‘thought-provoking’ to ‘inform about uncertainties’ and ‘widen the range of futures’. Therefore, we have opted to broaden our scope and to study creativity literature in general, to look for indicators for creativity that can be used to study the resulting scenarios from several different workshops in an objective manner. There is not one definition for creativity; according to Bruner [35] “effective surprise” is the main criterion for creativity, while Keil [36] sees creativity as the ability to look at things differently. Amabile [37] argues that creativity is exhibited when a product or service is generated that is both novel and useful. Although there is no single definition, many authors agree that divergent-thinking is an important skill relevant to creativity (e.g. [38], [39] and [40]), although it does not represent creativity fully [41]. Divergent thinking relates to the creation of several new ideas [42]. In scenario literature, it is assumed that creativity can be increased by involving stakeholders. In an open atmosphere diverse groups can learn from each other, compliment arguments and thus come up with new and creative concepts for future developments. Involvement of a wide range of stakeholders can lead to a wide range of ideas. It is therefore preferable to involve diverse stakeholders and to ensure that there is room for creative and non-linear thinking, which increases creativity and, consequently, the quality of scenarios.

Concluding we can state that it is possible to develop creativity criteria that are relatively easy to use on scenario workshop outputs and outcomes. These criteria can be used to study the effects of different contexts, like different tools or methods used to develop the scenarios, the length of workshops, the number of tools used, etc. Our analysis of nine workshops showed that the type of tool has a strong effect on the creativity of the storylines and the process as perceived by the stakeholders. As the type of tool used has the largest influence on the creativity of the workshop, great care should be taken when selecting tools for scenario development. FCMs seem to bring most structure to the workshop, while they seem to be capable of maintaining part of the creativity as well. The conclusion therefore seems valid that FCMs are a promising structuring tool, which would deserve more attention in scenario development. The analysis furthermore showed that, in contrast to our hypothesis, the length of the workshops (one or two days) did not affect the creativity. To further illustrate this, both the best and lowest graded workshops were one day workshops. Results on the size of the toolbox seem to show that with a larger toolbox more creativity is possible, most likely because it makes it easier to incorporate different types of knowledge and expertise of the participants. These results show the added value of using indicators. They are, however, based on a rather small data set and on indicators that only cover a part of creativity as it is described in scenario literature. Therefore, more indicators need to be developed for scenario quality criteria, which can help us to get a better knowledge of the relations between approaches and tools used and the outcomes and outputs of scenario projects.