The New Landscape of Uncertainty

What is it about?

This editorial and special issue are about how organizations can use scenario planning to navigate a world increasingly defined by uncertainty. In an era of geopolitical conflict, climate risk, technological disruption, and rapid social change, the issue and its editorial showcase scenario planning as a dynamic, integrative way to strengthen strategic decision-making, foster organizational learning, and enhance management amidst uncertainty. Across four in-depth articles plus the editorial introduction, readers can witness how scenario planning is applied in different organizations and industrial settings, each facing their own mix of challenges and opportunities. The special issue and editorial offer a window into organizations grappling with mandated climate disclosure, high‑stakes investments, the role of intuition and cognition in strategy, and the influence of culture and power in large technical systems. While the response of each organization studied is necessarily tailored to its context, taken together the studies provide a rich collection of scenario planning ideas, methods, and design choices that leaders can adapt for their own purposes. The editorial draws out common threads—such as the importance of involving diverse voices, recognizing scenario analysis as both an art and a science, viewing it as a learning system that operates from individual to organizational levels, integrating qualitative and quantitative techniques, and helping to build organizational resilience. While there is no single best way to conduct scenario planning, collectively, the articles in the special issue suggest that the most promising path is ongoing, collective learning inside organizations and across industries, supported by curiosity, open‑mindedness, and leadership that is willing to question assumptions. In addition to future research suggested in individual articles, the editorial also lays out potential future research on scenario planning focusing on three interconnected areas surrounding the development of stronger frameworks and metrics for assessing scenario quality and its cognitive effects; the need to design, test, and compare hybrid methodologies that link intuitive logics with decision-analytic tools such as real options, game theory, simulations, and operational models, so that scenario narratives translate more directly into valuing and choosing strategic options; and examining how best to blend insider and outsider knowledge, as well as emerging AI capabilities, in scenario development, analysis, and monitoring. The importance of managing effectively in a radically uncertain world was an impetus for developing this special issue, as was the ongoing need to make new insights accessible to a broad range of practitioners and scholars. When viewed in combination, the four papers in this special issue underscore that scenario planning is a well-established integrative, multi-dimensional vehicle for better strategy.

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Why is it important?

The editorial, and more broadly the special issue, advance the academic literature on scenario planning by juxtaposing four state-of-the-art articles that span mandated climate disclosure, intuitive cognition, option-game valuation, and organizational power dynamics in practice. They map how scenario planning operates across levels of analysis, integrate descriptive and prescriptive insights, and set out a forward-looking research agenda around scenario quality, hybrid qualitative–quantitative methods, and the roles of insider, outsider, and AI-enabled knowledge. Managers and leaders will see how different organizations handled a variety of uncertainties each faced, with special attention to their specific settings, contexts, objectives and organizational challenges. The various articles in this special issue highlight the importance of customizing scenario planning in real life settings and the important roles that leaders and participants play throughout scenario building dynamics. Pitfalls, biases and achievements are profiled in real world settings led by dedicated practitioners who at times encountered resistance from within their own organization or industry.