Both authors contributed equally to writing this book, and the ideas we present are the product of our longstanding collaboration with our dear friend and colleague, Kees van der Heijden. Throughout the book “we” is used sometimes to refer to the two authors (e.g. “we direct the reader’s attention to Figure 2.1”) and sometimes to the three developers of the OSPA (e.g. “from experience we have found that about two thirds of an intervention’s time should be devoted to client issues”). We kindly ask the reader to keep these two senses of “we” in mind.
Many other people have contributed to our learning over decades—too many to list by name. We direct our thanks to those who have contributed to our Oxford-based activities.
In terms of the scenario planning case studies in the Appendices, we would like to thank Shirin Elahi for co-authoring the UEG and EPO cases, and Esther Eidinow for co-authoring the Risk-World case. For reviewing and commenting on cases we thank: Prof. Michael Farthing for reviewing and commenting on the UEG case and Mr. Ciaran McGinley for doing the same on the EPO and Risk-World cases. We also want to thank Andrea Hernandez, Pauliina Tennilä, Rakesh Sarin, Jaakko Eskola, Mikael Makinen, and Christoph Vitzthum for reviewing and commenting on the Wärtsilä case study. Thanks to Jeremy Bentham and Cho Khong for reviewing and commenting on the Shell case and to Assaad Saab for doing the same on the Risk-World case.
We are very happy to extend our thanks to all the OSP and the Coaching and Consulting for Change Programme alumni/ae, and to the OFF participants for the learning we have been able to do with them. We particularly wish to thank the colleagues who have co-designed and co-hosted the OFF events with us: Yasser Bhatti, Kees van der Heijden, Lucy Kimbell, Roland Kupers, Diana Mangalagiu, Felix Reed-Tsochas, Cynthia Selin, John Selsky, and Kathleen Sutcliffe.
There is an army of “behind-the-scenes” staff who have contributed to the successes of the OSP and the OFF—colleagues who cater, clean and prepare rooms, provide administrative support, maintain the grounds, etc., and provide the enabling work environment which supports our research, education, and learning. We are very thankful to them.
We want to thank many colleagues in Templeton College (and thereafter Green-Templeton College), and in the Saïd Business School, the Smith School, and the James Martin School, for having supported our work in Oxford. Particular thanks go to Sue Dopson, Michael Earl, David Feeny, Gay Haskins, Elizabeth Howard, Janine Nahapiet, Jerry Ravetz, Steve Rayner, Keith Ruddle, Marc Thompson, Peter Tufano, David Watson, Andrew White, Caroline Williams, and Marshall Young.
The librarians in Templeton College, Green-Templeton College, and the Saïd Business School have been ever helpful with the futures library collections: Debra Farrell, Chris Flegg, and Christopher Jones; and of course Napier Collyns and the late Jaap Leemhuis must be acknowledged for having donated the Pierre Wack Library, and Angela Wilkinson for having obtained the Boucher Futures Research Library. These resources attract visiting scholars and executives to Oxford.
Many graduate students and more experienced researchers have acted as teaching and research assistants to the OSP over the years: our lead teaching assistants—Andromachi Athanasopoulou, Yasser Bhatti, Malobi Mukherjee, and Trudi Lang—deserve special mention. More recent iterations have had Cho Khong and Cynthia Selin act as OSP faculty, contributing to our learning. Thanks also to the dedicated program administrators who have made things work as planned: Christina Lisgo, Elaine Pullin, Claire Stephens, and Rose Talbot.
Over the years, the OSP has benefitted from organizations whose leaders have lent themselves and their conundrums as live case studies to support the learning of OSP participants. Thanks are due to executives in: Atkins; BMW; the Basingstoke and North Hampshire Foundation Trust of the NHS; the British Psychoanalytical Society; CESPA; Chatham House; the City of Helsinki; Discovery; Global Footprint Network; the Koestler Trust; the Legal Services Board; the McConnell Foundation; Meggitt; Music World; the National Breast Cancer Coalition; Novozymes; Orange; the Organisation Internationale pour la Francophonie; Oxfam; Oxford Analytica; the Oxford NHS Trust; Royal Mail; Selex Galileo; SIG Canada; SRG-SSR Swiss Broadcasting Corporation; Titan; Unipart Automotive; and the University of Southampton.
We would like to acknowledge the contributions of the OSP reviewers, whose critical collegiality has also contributed to our learning. External reviewers of the OSP include: Robin Bourgeois, Prof. Ted Fuller, Susan Lansig, Jaap Leemhuis, Steve Morgan, Dr. Michael Oborne, Satish Pradhan, Alun Rhydderch, Dr. Teresa Ribeiro, Fiona Schwab, Kristel van der Elst, and Prof. Wei-Ning Xiang. We are also grateful to Oxford University colleagues who have acted as internal reviewers: Prof. Sonia Antoraz Contera, Prof. William James, Prof. Javier Lezaun, Prof. Ted Malloch, Prof. Paul Montgomery, Dr. Pythagoras Petratos, Prof. Mari Sako, Prof. Hiram Samel, Prof. Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, Prof. Victor Seidel, and Prof. Sonia Trigueros.
We are also most indebted to Dr. John Selsky, who for this project acted as our editor. John managed to weave our varied prose into coherent and insightful text and also kept us focused on our aim of contributing new and clarifying ideas. The production of this book benefited from funding from the Saïd Foundation and the Smith School for Enterprise and Environment. We are most thankful to David Musson and Clare Kennedy at Oxford University Press for their caring and frank guidance and help in getting this volume published.
We hope this book continues to extend the considerable interest in scenario planning scholarship and practice in Oxford and beyond.
We fully acknowledge that any errors in references to wider literature are our responsibility alone.