Compare methods

	Seven Questions Scenario Method	Intuitive Logics Scenario Planning
Field	Futures Foresight Studies	Futures Foresight Studies
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1996	1995
Originator	Global Business Network (GBN) and the Shell scenario tradition (Pierre Wack lineage)	SRI International / Royal Dutch Shell tradition; Paul J. H. Schoemaker (codification)
Type	Structured-interview pipeline that seeds scenario building	Deductive scenario-construction pipeline using two critical uncertainties
Seminal source	Schoemaker, P. J. H. (1995). Scenario planning: A tool for strategic thinking. Sloan Management Review, 36(2), 25-40.	Schoemaker, P. J. H. (1995). Scenario planning: A tool for strategic thinking. Sloan Management Review, 36(2), 25-40.
Aliases	Seven Questions Interview, GBN Seven Questions, Shell Seven Questions, Oracle/Epitaph Interview Protocol	Intuitive Logics, 2x2 Scenario Matrix, Deductive Scenario Method, SRI Scenario Planning
Related	3	3
Summary	The seven questions scenario method is a structured interview protocol, associated with the Global Business Network and the Shell scenario tradition, used at the front end of scenario building to surface the concerns, predetermined elements, and critical uncertainties that will seed a set of scenarios. Rather than starting from abstract drivers, facilitators interview key informants and decision-makers using a fixed sequence of seven open questions — including the famous 'oracle' question (if you could ask a clairvoyant one thing about the future, what would it be?) and the 'epitaph' question about the legacy the organization hopes to leave. The interviews draw out what people most hope for, fear, and want to know, and the analysis of those responses identifies which forces are effectively predetermined and which are genuinely uncertain. As Schoemaker's account of scenario planning and Bishop, Hines, and Collins's survey of scenario techniques both stress, separating the predetermined from the uncertain is the pivot on which good scenarios turn.	Intuitive logics is the most widely used family of scenario-planning methods, in which a small set of internally consistent, plausible stories about the future is constructed deductively from a few critical uncertainties. Rooted in the practice pioneered at SRI International and at Royal Dutch Shell in the 1970s, and codified for strategic thinking by Paul Schoemaker in his 1995 Sloan Management Review article, the approach asks a planning team to identify the driving forces shaping a focal decision, rank them by how much they matter and how uncertain they are, and select two critical uncertainties that become the orthogonal axes of a two-by-two matrix. The four quadrants define four contrasting but coherent futures, each developed into a narrative. The aim is not to predict but to stretch managers' mental models and to stress-test strategy against a manageable spread of qualitatively different worlds.