Mysticism meets Big Oil in the tale of Pierre Wack, the eccentric French economist who brought scenario planning to the corporate world during the geopolitically turbulent 1970s.

Then, as today, a war in the Middle East upset global energy markets, showing the limitations of traditional forecasting. Yet not everyone was equally unprepared. Wack and his team of scenario planners at Royal Dutch Shell had highlighted the risks to Big Oil constituted by the rise of OPEC, public and political backlash to the industry, and other vulnerabilities ahead of the 1973 oil crisis. The story of how Wack and Shell were able to use scenarios to navigate the global shake-up of capitalism has become the mythologised origin point of corporate foresight. Yet Wack’s obsession with the mystical dimensions of scenario writing – his “spiritual documents” – is often glossed over.

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Hosts: Casper Skovgaard Petersen, August Leo Liljenberg, Tallulah Richards

Published by the ⁠⁠Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies