Exploring future scenarios for UPM

Dear participant, this is a minor student research project aiming to assist the strategy formulation process of a Finnish company by exploring possible future scenarios with a time horizon of about 20 years.

This project is done for UPM Kymmene Oyj as part of the Aalto University course TU-C2040 Strategy fieldwork (5 cr). We are developing four future scenarios that are described in the figure below. We would greatly appreciate if you could contribute to our research project by commenting this figure and by answering some of the questions presented further below.

Figure 1: This scenario matrix describes two dimensions of uncertainty: 1) international cooperation versus disintegration and 2) environmental ignorance versus environmental stewardship. Four possible scenarios emerge from these uncertainties: 1) United ecological stewardship, 2) Discoordinated environmentalism, 3) Blind capitalism, and 4) Joint ignorance. Several trends have been associated with each uncertainty dimension and scenario. Some megatrends that will change the world almost certainly are identified in the center.

Shortly about UPM

UPM (United Paper Mills) is a bio- and forest industry driven company. Its products include paper, packaging labels, biofuels, pulp, timber, plywood and energy. Other products include biochemicals and biocomposites. Much of UPMs business increasingly revolves around sustainability. At the end of 2015 UPM had production in 13 countries in 6 continents, employed 19,600 and generated sales of 10 billion euros. As the demand for paper has been declining the company is looking for future sources of growth.

Questions

0) You

Please fill in below your profession and field of expertise, and optionally your perspective if you wish to answer the following questions from a specific point of view.

Profession & domain: / Perspective:

1) Fill the empty cells in the following table

Probability: Estimate the probability of each scenario (0-100%). The sum does not need to be 100%. Impact to UPM: Estimate the impact of each scenario (from -5 (very negative) to +5 (very positive))

Scenario / 1) United stewardship / 2) Discoordinated environmentalism / 3) Blind capitalism / 4) Joint ignorance
Probability
Impact to UPM

2) Please list or explain some possible impacts if you can identify them.

3) Would you move, add, remove or modify trends in the matrix somehow?

4) Are the scenarios clear and easy to understand?

5) Do you have any additional comments or enhancement ideas?