From the earliest days, when Davidson displayed an interest in catastrophe theory and resilience, scenario builders have been influenced by their own experiences and their own ways of seeing the world. In spite of the dangers inherent in over-simplification, the history of this thought provides another lens not only on the history of scenarios in Shell but also on the Shell scenario principles themselves.

Jimmy Davidson understood that there is no “God-given” perspective and that organizations needed to speculate with uncertainty. His earlier work on political and general business risk in 1967 had emphasized that “governments do not act capriciously. Their behavior is motivated by internal and external forces.” He pushed the scenario approach as a way to “devise strategies that are sufficiently resilient to adapt to meet changes in circumstances.”

Ted Newland, the pragmatic insider, started with a long-range analysis to demonstrate the limits of forecasting and moved away from single, straight-line futures analysis to explore other possible futures. He was also the first to study how non-Shell actors might influence Shell's future and affect its strategy. He was the first leader of what was to grow into the larger scenario team.

Pierre Wack was the mystical insider, who harnessed the power of clear logics and storytelling to help executives engage with futures that were plausible but uncomfortable to think about. Wack, for example, contrasted thinking about things to seeing the essence of things. He believed that humans have the capacity to sense the future, so he saw scenarios as instrumental in helping train the intuition of senior decision makers. Intuition, in Wack's view, was vital to business success and involved something more than a “gut feeling.”

Wack's views came in part from philosophical and esoteric roots.