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There's a memorable passage in The Living Company, by Arie de Geus: "When I entered my first place of work [in the fifties]... I felt a slight level of discomfort. The theories back at business school had mentioned labour, but there had been no talk of people. Yet the real world... seemed to be full of them. And because the workplace was full of people, it looked suspiciously as if companies were not always rational, calculable and controllable."

Ever since Herman Kahn in the 60's and the Shell planning pioneers in the 70's published their first scenarios, the organisational uses of scenarios have continued to multiply. Also increasing was the link with research and thinking in (developmental) psycholody, neuro-biology and linguistics with which scenario thinking seems to fit quite harmoniously ...

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Waar de Belastingdienst vorig jaar voorzichtig begon met een verkenning van de toekomst, timmeren sommige andere organisaties al lange tijd aan de weg met hun 'vergezichten'. Zo zijn de Shell-scenario's inmiddels ruim drie decennia een begrip. Belastingbulletin belde met Arie de Geus, in zijn tijd een van de voorvechters van het scenariodenken binnen de oliemaatschappij. 'Als je dit verstandig aanpakt, kom je nooit voor verrassingen te staan.'

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Business books fall into two main categories. By far the largest is written by academics and consultants, people who tend to be long on theory but short on real-world management experience. Less frequent are memoirs and "how to" guides written by career managers, in which anecdote too often substitutes for insight. There are, however, notable exceptions to the memoir rule. Books such as Alfred Sloan's My Years at General Motors (1963) and The Living Company (1997) by Arie de Geus, former Shell manager, demonstrate that some multi-talented managers can cross the divide

Voormalig Shell topman Arie de Geus denkt niet elke dag na over ICT als zodanig. Waar hij zichzelf wel vragen over stelt is wat is de aard en de plaats van Information Technology in het bedrijfsleven van vandaag? Is het een technologie op zichzelf, heeft het absolute waarde of is het alleen maar een bepaald 'stadium' van iets diepers en heeft het daardoor een veel wijdere uitwerking? Arie was o.a. Hoofd Corporate Strategic Planning en na zijn pensionering bleef hij minstens zo actief als ervoor. Hij verworf faam als management strateeg en is auteur van het inspirerende boek 'The Living Company'. IcT manager 'ontlokte' hem zijn hypotheses en visies rond ICT, mens en organisatie

VOEKS is 50, the Koninklijke 110 years of age. My father and I together have been there for 53 of those years- 1936 to 1989- i.e. all of VOEKS' life and half the lifespan of the Koninklijke. What a good moment to look back as well as forward. VOEKS is, obviously, strongly related to the Pension Fund. But there is a long history that preceded both.

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What distinguishing features characterize the New Economy? Is it a mere wave of new technology, or should we look deeper? Does it threaten only the weak and the meek? Or have the basic conditions to achieve long-term business success changed dramatically?

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Is there anything we can learn from companies older than ours? This was the question that some people at Shell asked themselves in the mid 1980's. Business history is a much neglected subject nowadays. Is that because today's world is so different from the past that history carries no lessons? Or are we so absorbed by the present that we do not afford the time to look at the past?

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Many a time, the search for a good answer to a good question leads to unexpected, but often satisfactory discoveries. Looking at the table of contents of this issue of the European Journal of Operational Research, one wonders whether one is looking at such a case.