BANI, a framework originally created by Jamais Cascio, names four ways the world “breaks”: Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, Incomprehensible. It’s expressly a sense-making lens, not a forecasting tool.

For more on BANI, please refer to Jamais Cascio’s expanded write-up, here.

Where VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) captured post–Cold War turbulence, BANI describes the current “age of chaos”: systems optimised for efficiency that snap under stress; organisations and markets that behave anxiously; cause–effect patterns that are nonlinear (small shocks driving outsized impacts); and contexts that feel incomprehensible due to opaque technology, policy whiplash, and information overload.

Traditional strategy assumes tomorrow looks like yesterday, until it doesn’t. Our BANI-based scenario planning transforms uncertainty into clarity by combining hard numbers with human-centered foresight, to build strategies that work when the world doesn’t.