Teaching Scenario Planning in Sustainability Courses: The Creative Play Method

Abstract

Sustainability management is rapidly progressing from an operational task to a strategic imperative one as environmental and social concerns shape the business environment. Scenario planning is increasingly being used by companies and governments to explore the potential impact of future challenges. Applied in a management education context scenario planning offers teachers of sustainability a tool through which they can promote creativity while developing student knowledge, skills, and abilities, preparing them for work in an increasingly dynamic market environment. Within this article, an instructional innovation is presented as a two-stage workshop designed as an experiential exercise to promote creativity and generate scenarios linked to sustainability. The first stage of the workshop utilizes LEGO to generate creativity before the second stage builds on these creative foundations guiding student teams through the construction of scenarios around sustainability challenges. An evaluation is presented for the instructional innovation reporting its success in producing skills in creative thinking within cohorts of postgraduate students at a major Australian university.