The PROTEUS Project: Scenario-based planning in a unique organization

Abstract

PROTEUS is an advanced concepts futures research effort that seeks to pull out innovation drivers and new technology concepts by looking broadly and deeply across plausible alternative futures and characterizing uncertainty in the future national security problem space. The analytical techniques underlying the research have come from two sources. The scenario-based planning technique utilized was based on commercial best practices designed to manage uncertainty as developed by The Futures Group (now part of Deloitte Consulting, LP). The technology planning technique is based on the former Futures Group's original work for the Federal Government in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Adhering to the principle of future “plausibility” versus “probability,” four fundamental precepts have guided the research: avoid uncritical extrapolation from today, avoid reductionism, challenge conventional thinking and do not necessarily drive for an early consensus. Rigor in applying the precepts helps the organization break old thinking patterns and frees it to discover the dynamic forces for change emerging from alternative world situations. With this new understanding, the organization can evaluate alternative advanced research and development (AR&D) strategies and perform tradeoff analyses of decision-making processes. The research has evolved in two parts: (1) an examination of the future national security problem space using scenario-based planning and (2) the development of several approaches to the solution space (what should an organization do about the problems uncovered). Framing a challenging and perhaps nontraditional problem space to explore possible outcomes, then engaging in planning workshops set in those future operating environments has resulted in some cases, startling possibilities for a unique organization to pursue. Possibilities arise from the study of six alternative worlds and they appear to cross multiple venues: physical, virtual, biological and even temporal. Thinking in new ways about the future-operating environment along with the understanding of emerging future technologies helps research planners in a historically advanced systems engineering organization develop a solid basis for AR&D investments.