Practical guide to identifying the right uncertainties for your foresight scenarios

Critical uncertainties are the factors that could shape the future in the most impactful and unpredictable ways. They are the “wild cards” that can shift direction, disrupt markets, or redefine entire industries. Unlike trends, which usually evolve predictably, uncertainties have high potential impact and low predictability.

In scenario planning, these uncertainties form the backbone of your scenario matrix. They determine how your narratives will unfold and what strategic insights can be drawn.

Why do critical uncertainties matter?

Choosing the right uncertainties defines the quality and usefulness of your scenarios. Poorly chosen uncertainties lead to irrelevant or generic futures. The right ones reveal real strategic challenges, highlight blind spots, and stimulate creative thinking about what the organization should prepare for.

How to identify and select your critical uncertainties

Start broad, then narrow down.

• Scan widely for change drivers. Collect signals and trends from diverse domains such as technology, politics, society, and the environment.
• Cluster and categorize. Group related drivers to see larger patterns.
• Assess impact and uncertainty. Use a simple matrix: high-impact, high-uncertainty items are your focus.
• Prioritize collaboratively. Involve key stakeholders to validate what truly matters for your organization’s future.

This process ensures that your scenarios explore plausible, strategically relevant futures rather than abstract or academic possibilities.

For a detailed, practical walkthrough of the first step – systematic horizon scanning – see our complete guide to horizon scanning
 for foresight professionals.

How to define critical uncertainties clearly

Once identified, define each uncertainty as a continuum of possibilities rather than a single unknown. For instance, “global energy policy” might range from “rapid decarbonization” to “fossil fuel persistence.” Each extreme becomes an axis on which scenarios are built.

Good definitions are:

• Binary but plausible: both ends feel realistic.
• Independent: each uncertainty describes a distinct domain.
• Actionable: they inform concrete decisions or strategies.

Tools and collaboration for defining uncertainties

Systematic foresight work benefits from structured collaboration and intelligent automation. A dedicated foresight platform such as FIBRES enables teams to collect signals, visualize drivers of change, and evaluate uncertainties together – all in one place.

With Foresight Agents, users can take this a step further. When the Agents are set to investigate a foresight research question, they automatically conduct a horizon scan, identify two critical uncertainties, and even generate scenario drafts based on their findings. This automated process accelerates research, broadens the scope of insights, and helps foresight professionals focus their expertise on refining and interpreting the most relevant futures.

Key takeaways

• Critical uncertainties are high-impact, unpredictable factors shaping your future.
• Identify them through broad scanning, clustering, and prioritization.
• Define them as opposing but plausible futures to build meaningful scenarios.
• Use structured and automated tools like FIBRES to make the process efficient, insightful, and scalable.