Future Sessions Launches 'Future Scenario Prototyping', a Co-Creation Program to Build Strategic Hypotheses from Future Scenarios Through Dialogue with AI
Future Sessions Inc. has started offering 'Future Scenario Prototyping', a program that merges generative AI with human dialogue. It enables organizations to efficiently create mid-to-long-term future scenarios and strategic hypotheses in just two sessions.
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- 📰 Published: April 23, 2026 at 19:00
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Future Sessions Inc. (Headquarters: Minato-ku, Tokyo, President and CEO: Hideyuki Arifuku, hereinafter 'Future Sessions'), which creates creative dialogue spaces to realize social innovation, will begin offering 'Future Scenario Prototyping', a co-creation program combining AI and dialogue.
Through two co-creation sessions lasting 3-4 hours each, this program provides end-to-end support from creating themes and questions to collecting signs of change, building future scenarios, and materializing strategic hypotheses. Its unique feature is utilizing AI not as a one-shot generation tool, but as an 'assistant for drafting and refining' to accelerate trial and error through participant dialogue.
■ Background of Development
In corporations, amidst an era of uncertainty, a mid-to-long-term future vision that can be shared across multiple departments is indispensable for advancing mid-term management plans and investment decisions. However, due to practical priorities and the burden of consensus-building processes, it's often difficult to secure the time needed to conceptualize future visions with sufficient resolution and iterate on considerations.
Traditional scenario planning is an effective method, but to achieve a sufficient standard in creating mid-to-long-term future visions—from generating themes and organizing signs of change to storytelling and strategizing—requires considerable time and multiple deliberation opportunities. On the other hand, merely referencing external reports or generative AI outputs hardly serves as decision-making material aligned with a company's own context; interpretation and refinement through dialogue are essential.
Since its founding in 2012, Future Sessions has engaged in building future scenarios and designing co-creation processes for numerous companies, local governments, and administrations. It has systematized methods that consistently support the process from theme setting to collecting signs of change, scenario building, and verifying strategic hypotheses. Underlying this is the process consulting philosophy of 'not providing answers, but creating a state where participants themselves can make decisions through dialogue', and a stance of designing sustainable co-creation mechanisms rather than ending with transient projects.
By fusing the power of generative AI with these accumulations, we have developed a new program that yields deliverables capable of withstanding decision-making even in a short period.
■ Overview of Future Scenario Prototyping
This program consists of two sessions (3-4 hours each, held on separate days).
In the first session, the following five steps are completed once to gather the overall picture and first-draft deliverables.
Creation of theme and questions — Determine the exploration theme based on participants' interests.
Broadening the view on signs of change — Comprehensively extract signs using AI and organize categories.
Identifying future bifurcation points — Select important signs and narrow the focus of dialogue.
Creation of future scenarios — Depict as stories and summarize key points.
Strategic hypothesis consideration — Materialize actionable steps and prioritize them.
In each step, the cycle of 'create draft → dialogue → refine' is repeated at least three times, aiming for deliverables that participants can truly feel 'we made ourselves'.
In the second session, based on the deliverables obtained in the first session, key issues centered around future scenarios and strategic hypotheses are deepened, elevating the resolution to a level that withstands decision-making.
■ Features of This Program
AI is the assistant, participants are the protagonists. Future Scenario Prototyping is not a program that auto-generates future visions with AI. It's a co-creation process where participants set questions, layer interpretations through dialogue, and assemble future scenarios and strategic hypotheses in their own words, using AI as an assistant for drafting and refining.
Methods systematized from years of practice. The series of steps—theme setting, collecting signs of change from STEEP (Society/Customs, Science/Technology, Economy/Market, Environment/Ecosystems, Policy/Politics) perspectives, scenario building, and strategic hypothesis verification—are based on methods Future Sessions has practiced and improved over 10+ years. The use of AI allows this system to be executed in a shorter time and with higher resolution.
The tactile feel of co-creation through dialogue design. What Future Sessions values is not receiving correct answers, but updating perceptions through dialogue and creating a state where participants can say 'we decided it ourselves'. Starting from the desired future vision, we design spaces for dialogue and connections among stakeholders, providing mechanisms that don't end as one-offs.
■ Deliverables
The following deliverables are prepared upon program completion.
Deliverable
Content
Theme and Questions
The issues and judgment axes explored in this program.
List of Signs of Change
A list of signs organizing changes in the external environment (approx. 20-30).
Future Scenarios
Mid-to-long-term scenarios based on multiple signs (story format + key point summary).
Strategic Hypothesis List
Actionable plans based on the scenarios.
Through two co-creation sessions lasting 3-4 hours each, this program provides end-to-end support from creating themes and questions to collecting signs of change, building future scenarios, and materializing strategic hypotheses. Its unique feature is utilizing AI not as a one-shot generation tool, but as an 'assistant for drafting and refining' to accelerate trial and error through participant dialogue.
■ Background of Development
In corporations, amidst an era of uncertainty, a mid-to-long-term future vision that can be shared across multiple departments is indispensable for advancing mid-term management plans and investment decisions. However, due to practical priorities and the burden of consensus-building processes, it's often difficult to secure the time needed to conceptualize future visions with sufficient resolution and iterate on considerations.
Traditional scenario planning is an effective method, but to achieve a sufficient standard in creating mid-to-long-term future visions—from generating themes and organizing signs of change to storytelling and strategizing—requires considerable time and multiple deliberation opportunities. On the other hand, merely referencing external reports or generative AI outputs hardly serves as decision-making material aligned with a company's own context; interpretation and refinement through dialogue are essential.
Since its founding in 2012, Future Sessions has engaged in building future scenarios and designing co-creation processes for numerous companies, local governments, and administrations. It has systematized methods that consistently support the process from theme setting to collecting signs of change, scenario building, and verifying strategic hypotheses. Underlying this is the process consulting philosophy of 'not providing answers, but creating a state where participants themselves can make decisions through dialogue', and a stance of designing sustainable co-creation mechanisms rather than ending with transient projects.
By fusing the power of generative AI with these accumulations, we have developed a new program that yields deliverables capable of withstanding decision-making even in a short period.
■ Overview of Future Scenario Prototyping
This program consists of two sessions (3-4 hours each, held on separate days).
In the first session, the following five steps are completed once to gather the overall picture and first-draft deliverables.
Creation of theme and questions — Determine the exploration theme based on participants' interests.
Broadening the view on signs of change — Comprehensively extract signs using AI and organize categories.
Identifying future bifurcation points — Select important signs and narrow the focus of dialogue.
Creation of future scenarios — Depict as stories and summarize key points.
Strategic hypothesis consideration — Materialize actionable steps and prioritize them.
In each step, the cycle of 'create draft → dialogue → refine' is repeated at least three times, aiming for deliverables that participants can truly feel 'we made ourselves'.
In the second session, based on the deliverables obtained in the first session, key issues centered around future scenarios and strategic hypotheses are deepened, elevating the resolution to a level that withstands decision-making.
■ Features of This Program
AI is the assistant, participants are the protagonists. Future Scenario Prototyping is not a program that auto-generates future visions with AI. It's a co-creation process where participants set questions, layer interpretations through dialogue, and assemble future scenarios and strategic hypotheses in their own words, using AI as an assistant for drafting and refining.
Methods systematized from years of practice. The series of steps—theme setting, collecting signs of change from STEEP (Society/Customs, Science/Technology, Economy/Market, Environment/Ecosystems, Policy/Politics) perspectives, scenario building, and strategic hypothesis verification—are based on methods Future Sessions has practiced and improved over 10+ years. The use of AI allows this system to be executed in a shorter time and with higher resolution.
The tactile feel of co-creation through dialogue design. What Future Sessions values is not receiving correct answers, but updating perceptions through dialogue and creating a state where participants can say 'we decided it ourselves'. Starting from the desired future vision, we design spaces for dialogue and connections among stakeholders, providing mechanisms that don't end as one-offs.
■ Deliverables
The following deliverables are prepared upon program completion.
Deliverable
Content
Theme and Questions
The issues and judgment axes explored in this program.
List of Signs of Change
A list of signs organizing changes in the external environment (approx. 20-30).
Future Scenarios
Mid-to-long-term scenarios based on multiple signs (story format + key point summary).
Strategic Hypothesis List
Actionable plans based on the scenarios.