Gaining insight: Re-thinking at the edge

• Informs scenario planning practice with five-stage model for rethinking and seeing the future.
• Enables participants of scenario development to gain “ah-ha” moments of insight and foresight.
• Explains Wack's "gentle art of re-perceiving" by exploring the philosophical underpinnings of his thinking and practice.
• Provides practitioners with useful information for building scenarios, vision and strategy.

Pierre Wack, one of the founders of scenario planning, pioneered a new way of thinking — the “gentle art of re-perceiving.” While scholars and practitioners have explored the process of scenario planning at great length, little attention has yet been paid to the meta-process of re-thinking. Referencing Wack's work at Shell, interviews with his former colleagues and family members, and information about his life and research available in both published and unpublished sources, this article provides a framework for this meta-process. By re-thinking to re-perceive the world differently, this paper explains how the “inner space” of the mind gains foresight. The research findings indicate that an individual must go through five stages – clutching old realities, reasoning and emotion, reflection and inspiration, seeing and awakening, and knowing and molding – to gain insight and see the future.