Did we predict the Tesco Village?

My first response to Tesco's plans to develop four communities in the south-east was one of déjà vu - three years ago we wrote about the ‘Tesco Village’ in a report exploring the future of retail.

We described it in one of our Retail Futuresscenarios as "affordable, high-quality housing in a new, eco-friendly community with everything you need for a happy family life on your doorstep, supplied by the company you trust. Be part of the zero-carbon future and get good deals at your local Tesco into the bargain."

Newspapers reported Tesco’s plans to build developments of up to 1,000 homes as ‘mini-villages’ although the retailer takes issue with that description. Either way it’s a step towards the possibility we raise in the scenario ‘I'm in your hands’ (report, p49).

And it’s not the only element from our Retail Futures scenarios to have appeared in one form or another. We've seen a collapse in the housing boom and a credit crisis; an i-phone app that scans barcodes for product environment ratings; and the rise of repair culture and grow-your-own initiatives.

It's tempting to think that we predicted them all. We could even convince ourselves, with a bit of effort, that we anticipated the political response to recession in the UK. Faced with years of austerity, do we look to big institutions like government to sort things out for us, or do we as citizens and consumers want to take more responsibility for ourselves, thinking it is more efficient and appropriate? This is one of the defining uncertainties in the Retail Futures scenarios. The Labour Party says the first, the Tories the second.

Smug? Not really, as that would be missing the point. We weren’t trying to predict the future, but to explore possibilities and to rehearse - with our partners Unilever and Tesco - what a sustainable response to future challenges and opportunities would be. A successful futures process leads to gut realisation firstly that the future is inherently unknowable, and secondly that acknowledging that uncertainty is the first step to dealing with it and planning for long-term success. It’s a journey from anxiety to empowerment.

People want to hear the secrets of the future, as if the truth was out there and, if we're very clever, we can find it. Acknowledging that the future is uncertain, unpredictable, full of surprises, is naturally unsettling, whereas predictions are reassuring, even though all the evidence about predictions is that they are usually wrong.Planning for a certain future is a lot easier than planning for uncertainty. So most planning in business and government keeps the blinkers on, avoiding uncertainty, focusing on the short-term - and ends up unsustainable as a result.

It's not surprising that the Retail Futures scenarios contain a lot of ideas that are emerging a few years down the line, because we spoke to dozens of retail experts in the UK as well as creative thinkers on the margins of the sector, such as entrepreneurs, designers, architects and planners. But a good scenario is not defined by what elements of it come true. The strength of a scenario is how well it engages people when it is used and whether it genuinely makes them think differently about the future. Many excellent scenarios never come true.

In futures work it's a constant challenge to resist the demand for predictions. It's even more difficult to resist the temptation to say we got it right – but getting it right should never be our intention.