Scenarios¶
Wack, P. (1985). Scenarios: Uncharted Waters Ahead. Harvard Business Review, 63(5), 73-89.
Cited by¶
10 citations across 10 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Backcasting
- Probabilistic backcasting—running the analysis across a range of cost, efficiency, or adoption-rate assumptions—provides a robustness envelope and reveals which milestones are sensitive to which variables, echoing Wack's (1985) early case for scenarios as a way to navigate fundamental uncertainty without collapsing it into a single forecast.
This sourceFoundational treatment of scenario planning at Royal Dutch/Shell: scenarios surface managers' tacit assumptions and prepare for fundamental uncertainty rather than produce a single forecast.
- Probabilistic backcasting—running the analysis across a range of cost, efficiency, or adoption-rate assumptions—provides a robustness envelope and reveals which milestones are sensitive to which variables, echoing Wack's (1985) early case for scenarios as a way to navigate fundamental uncertainty without collapsing it into a single forecast.
- Foresight
- The instant the inquiry collapses to a single anticipated future, it has stopped being foresight and become prediction, which Wack (1985) identifies as the defining failure mode in his account of the Shell scenarios.
This sourceFoundational treatment of Shell scenario planning: argues scenarios surface managers' tacit assumptions and prepare for fundamental uncertainty rather than produce a single forecast; identifies collapse-to-prediction as the defining failure mode. SUPPORTS the prediction-failure-mode claim (153) and the weak-signal/regret value claims (161).
- The instant the inquiry collapses to a single anticipated future, it has stopped being foresight and become prediction, which Wack (1985) identifies as the defining failure mode in his account of the Shell scenarios.
- Scenario Planning
Mechanisms¶
- Cross-Layer Scenario Comparison
- It shares machinery with classic scenario planning, but differs in its decisive move — where scenario planning varies external uncertainties
This sourceCharacterizes scenario planning as exploring alternative outcomes of important external uncertainties.
- It shares machinery with classic scenario planning, but differs in its decisive move — where scenario planning varies external uncertainties
- Scenario Cube
- … into a bounded set of named, contrasting worlds, so a strategy can be stress-tested for robustness rather than optimized for a single guess — the practice made famous by Royal Dutch Shell's scenario planning, where a small number of divergent stories prepared the firm for shocks no point forecast had predicted
This sourceDescribes Shell's use of a finite set of contrasting scenarios instead of a single projection and reports that the work prepared management for the 1973 oil crisis.
- … into a bounded set of named, contrasting worlds, so a strategy can be stress-tested for robustness rather than optimized for a single guess — the practice made famous by Royal Dutch Shell's scenario planning, where a small number of divergent stories prepared the firm for shocks no point forecast had predicted
- Scenario Learning Program
- Scenario Planning Workshop
- The canonical practice is Shell's scenario planning, credited with preparing the company to respond faster than rivals when oil markets lurched, precisely because it had rehearsed multiple futures rather than betting on one.
This sourceDescribes how Shell used multiple scenarios to prepare for oil-market discontinuities instead of relying on a single forecast.
- The canonical practice is Shell's scenario planning, credited with preparing the company to respond faster than rivals when oil markets lurched, precisely because it had rehearsed multiple futures rather than betting on one.
- Scenario Robustness Check
- It is the disciplined descendant of scenario planning, which reasons about a handful of vivid, named futures rather than a probability distribution.
This sourceUses a small set of vivid scenarios to challenge single-forecast thinking rather than assign probabilities.
- It is the disciplined descendant of scenario planning, which reasons about a handful of vivid, named futures rather than a probability distribution.
- Scenario State Map
- Its signature failure is scenario theater — a fan of futures that look diverse but all quietly rest on the same unexamined assumption, so the map set gives false comfort while missing the risk that actually matters.
This sourceShows that useful scenarios must challenge shared assumptions and surface disruptions that the prevailing worldview would miss.
- Its signature failure is scenario theater — a fan of futures that look diverse but all quietly rest on the same unexamined assumption, so the map set gives false comfort while missing the risk that actually matters.
- Strategy Sensemaking Workshop
- Holding several readings of the future open rather than committing to a single forecast is the core discipline of scenario planning, whose value has always been less in predicting the future than in loosening a leadership team's grip on one assumed future.
This sourceRejects a single right forecast and presents scenarios as a way to structure uncertainty by changing decision-makers' assumptions and mental models.
- Holding several readings of the future open rather than committing to a single forecast is the core discipline of scenario planning, whose value has always been less in predicting the future than in loosening a leadership team's grip on one assumed future.
Verification¶
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