Cynthia selin

Scholar, Foresight Expert, Strategy Consultant

  • cynthia selin, phd

    PRINCIPAL AND FOUNDER, scenaric

    ASSOCIATE FELLOW, UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

    The future cannot be calculated. It has to be imagined, together.

    As change accelerates and generates more systemic novelty, organizations reach for more data, better models, faster analysis. But the hardest strategic problems don't yield to that. The real difficulty is making sense of what's happening and agreeing on what to do about it.
    Dr. Selin has spent 20 years helping leadership teams, drawing on her social science research and her teaching at Oxford's Saïd Business School. Clients call when a dilemma or decision is consequential, hard to grasp, and harder to align around. Her work creates the conditions for a team to surface what it actually thinks and to interrogate those views rigorously. Teams leave with sharper judgment and a clearer basis for action.

  • offerings & results

    What brings clients to Scenaric:

    • A board or executive team needs to align on a future it can't predict
    • A new technology is shifting the ground under the strategy
    • An important investment rests on assumptions that feel shaky
    • Key conversations are stalled due to irreducible uncertainty

    Dr. Selin's engagements have enabled leaders to stress-test major decisions; build in-house strategic intelligence; align on key issues after months of stalemate; and spot opportunities others missed.

    Engagements typically include:

    • Scenario planning
    • Training in decision making under deep uncertainty
    • Facilitation of executive and board retreats
    • Strategic advisory and foresight capacity building
    • Stakeholder engagement and deliberative processes
    • Futurity Archetypes™ workshops
    • Keynotes and executive education

    Clients that have trusted Scenaric with this work:

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  • CURRENT FOCUS AREAS

    AI governance and the strategic implications of agentic systems
    Energy transition and long-horizon infrastructure decisions
    Societal resistance to emerging technologies
    Strategy under conditions of geopolitical uncertainty

  • Contact

    Get in touch to explore a collaboration.

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