Businesses are increasingly integrating sustainability – or Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) – into existing strategies or developing separate sustainability strategies. Simultaneously, they are reporting on their sustainability related impacts, and the use of is becoming more common both in strategy development and risk assessments aimed at reporting. However, the value of the approaches to scenario analysis in the main sustainability reporting and ESG frameworks is questionable. They tend to be technically oriented and not conducive to explaining and communicating key strategically important aspects of the futures sought understood, which overlooks other critical sustainability dimensions such as social equity and inclusive economic growth. Furthermore, such use of scenarios is not conducive for promoting innovation. This article examines the current use of scenarios, focusing on common business practices, while also emphasising the need to be ambitious and utilise the potential of science fiction in the scenario process. I propose a practical, pragmatic, and “non-ideal” version of scenario development that is a) an improvement on current business practices and b) accessible and useful for companies wanting to utilize scenarios without extensive resources or the inclination to rely heavily on external scenario experts. This culminates in a recommendation that adopt a more comprehensive approach to sustainability scenarios than what is found in mainstream reporting frameworks. By deepening their engagement with scenarios, organisations will be able to improve the foundations for their strategy development processes, which will also be more tightly coupled with an organisation's innovation management and design processes. Most importantly, however, comprehensive science fiction scenarios can help enable a more sustainable future. By creating and shaping imaginaries of more sustainable futures, such futures become more likely.

中文翻译：

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科幻小说、可持续性和场景使用：改进战略开发和创新的综合场景

企业越来越多地将可持续发展——或环境、社会、治理（ESG）——纳入现有战略或制定单独的可持续发展战略。同时，他们正在报告与可持续性相关的影响，并且在旨在报告的战略制定和风险评估中使用变得越来越普遍。然而，主要可持续发展报告和 ESG 框架中情景分析方法的价值值得怀疑。它们往往以技术为导向，不利于解释和传达所寻求理解的未来的关键战略重要方面，而忽视了社会公平和包容性经济增长等其他关键的可持续发展维度。而且，这样的场景运用也不利于推动创新。本文探讨了场景的当前使用情况，重点关注常见的商业实践，同时也强调在场景过程中需要雄心勃勃并发挥科幻小说的潜力。我提出了一种实用的、务实的和“非理想”的场景开发版本，它是a）对当前业务实践的改进，b）对于想要利用场景但没有大量资源或倾向于严重依赖外部的公司来说是可访问和有用的场景专家。最终提出一项建议，即采用比主流报告框架更全面的方法来应对可持续发展情景。通过加深对场景的参与，组织将能够改善其战略开发流程的基础，这也将与组织的创新管理和设计流程更加紧密地结合。然而，最重要的是，全面的科幻场景可以帮助实现更可持续的未来。通过创造和塑造更可持续的未来的想象，这样的未来变得更有可能。