In Academic Year 2020-2021, SAASS launched a new partnership with Good Judgment Inc. and Event Horizon Strategies, two organizations that offer proprietary techniques to help constrain the uncertainty of the future. Over twelve weeks, SAASS students learn the art of making near-term forecasts, methods for crafting scenarios about the longer-term future, and how best the two can be linked.
Lt Col Sarah Bakhtiari, Course Director for this applied strategy course, asserts that students need practice thinking in structured but divergent ways to be the best strategists: “Making probabilistic assessments exercises analytical faculties, while crafting scenarios about the future exercises creative genius. The combination of the two links very different cognitive endeavors and drives better insights about the future, which can offer our military competitive advantage over its adversaries.”
The course culminates in a capstone week during which student teams develop strategy based on their forecasts and visions of the future.