The strategic conversation, 25 years later: A retrospective review of Kees van der Heijden's Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation

Abstract

Kees van der Heijden is an icon in the futures and foresight academic and practitioner community. Educated at the Technische Universiteit Delft, his work at Royal Dutch Shell, the Global Business Network, the Strathclyde Business School at University of Strathclyde, the Saïd Business School and the Templeton College at University of Oxford, and the Netherlands Business School at Nijenrode University has shaped the scholarly field of futures studies as well as the practical world of scenario facilitation. This article is a 25-year reflective and retrospective book review of Kees van der Heijden's seminal text Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation. The authors conducted interviews with colleagues, coworkers, collaborators, students, and friends of Kees van der Heijden to add depth and dimension to this retrospective work. To bring van der Heijden's work into scholarly conversation with the extant literature, we also situated this return to Scenarios in the context of related works and other reviews of both editions of the book.