We think about the future all day, every day.

The scenario planning Wack developed at Shell, and that the company still conducts today, follows certain rules. Multiple scenarios must be produced (usually two to four) based on the same rigorously researched and reliable datasets. Like the evidence presented to the Irish citizens’ assembly, data cannot be ideological, nor can it be vague,

The engineers who had pioneered this form of construction worked for Arup, a company famous for its stated principle of only working on projects that matter.

John and Mary’s story bears an uncanny resemblance to the narratives of abused women, runaway slaves, refugees, of anyone forced to flee for their lives: the absolute certainty that the only possibility of safety lies in choosing danger. Only if you concede that the future is inevitable are you truly trapped.

when Brian Chesky founded Airbnb, he had only the loosest idea of what his company could or would become. He did what most business people do: he talked to customers. But he didn’t ask them about the existing products or make them fill out dreary surveys. Instead, he interrogated them about their fantasies. What would a six-star experience be for a

Today’s technology today accommodates vastly far more data but the intrinsic difficulty of models remains: the more data is compressed, the more its predictive power is compromised.

They do not claim that the technique has given them control or the ability to predict accurately. Rather its strengths lie in highlighting options and alternatives, in seeing possibilities otherwise obscure, and in building within the organisation the imaginative and creative capability that derives from asking ‘what if . . .’ and ‘so what?’

The idea of the perfected world, from which all difficulties and anomalies are removed, is a persistent one, attractive to individuals who feel they already have what it takes, and repellent to those who see in our diversity and interdependence the foundations of adaptive, creative and sustainable societies.

Epigenetics, the study of all the factors beyond genes that determine life, is revealing how much more complex inheritance is.24 So when you get into the genetic determination of personality, prediction becomes highly problematic.