There is a Darwinian process in the corporate world. Companies rise, and then fall, to be replaced by new ones with new business models and new offerings. In their seminal study of more than one thousand companies, “Creative Destruction,” Richard Foster and Sarah Kaplan wrote that more than 75% of the Standard & Poor's 500 in thirty years’ time will be companies that we do not know today.

Like companies, countries wax and wane. Like companies, countries face the challenges of discontinuity, volatility, and uncertainty. These challenges are increasing in intensity in the complex operating environment of today’s globalized world. Every government aims to find a way to navigate such challenges, and to put its country on a path to sustainable long-term growth and development.

Compared to both companies and many countries, Royal Dutch Shell is an anomaly. More than a hundred years old, with antecedents going back even further, Shell's longevity and resilience must stand as a valuable case study of how a company, in a highly competitive industry, has been able to survive and succeed over such a long period.

There are many reasons for Shell's success, including leadership, sound management and good luck. They undoubtedly offer important insights for companies as well as for governments.

One particular element that arguably has had an impact on Shell’s fortunes is its use of scenarios, an approach to strategic planning that the company pioneered more than forty years ago.

Leaders of companies, and leaders of countries, often have to make big decisions, and to develop long-term strategies and plans, without all the information they need, and without certainty that the desired outcomes will be achieved. It is not possible to prepare exhaustively for every conceivable contingency. Instead, the “search and discover” approach is an important way to deal with such uncertainty.

Scenario planning is a form of “search and discover”. Scenarios project futures based on our understanding of today's operating environment. They provide plausible descriptions of what might happen in the future. Scenarios make people aware of uncertainties, challenges as well as opportunities, in a future that is essentially unknowable. Scenarios awake the imagination and initiate learning. Used intelligently, scenarios can be an important tool for strategic planning.