Enhancing scenario originality: A conceptual framework for leveraging self-transcending knowledge in scenario development

One of the most intense scholarly debates in scenario development research centers around methodologies to create feasible and at the same time original scenarios. While ample research solved most methodological challenges to achieve scenario feasibility, recent methodologies still fall short to simultaneously ensure the development of highly original scenarios and their consideration during strategy making. Some scholars suggest that this situation emerged because recent approaches exclusively use explicit and tacit-embodied knowledge during the scenario development process, and thereby base scenarios on what we already know. Others point to the importance of accessing emerging knowledge for sensing business opportunities. Taken together, dispersed bodies of scholarly work suggest that leveraging such self-transcending knowledge can support achieving originality in scenario development. The purpose of this paper is to shed new light on these debates through an examination of how self-transcending knowledge can be accessed in scenario development, and how leveraging it benefits scenario originality and the uptake of highly original scenarios in strategic decision making. Our main contribution to scenario development research is the conceptualization of a new knowledge theory-based perspective and methodological framework that complements but goes beyond the recent research focus on improving the classic scenario development approach and aims to assure scenario originality. We develop and find case study-based empirical evidence for the propositions that, compared to the sole application of the classic scenario development approach, the implementation of such methodology 1) enhances scenario originality, 2) extends the variety of strategic options, and 3) increases the consideration of original scenarios in decision making. Thereby, we substantiate the importance of accessing all three knowledge types for developing feasible and original scenarios.