Even though war gaming and scenario planning are widely used in business contexts, there
is little evidence that either practice is associated with superior performance. Why, then,
spend the costs? In this paper we address this puzzle and suggest why the extant empirical
findings have so far proven limited. We consider the development of these practices and find
that they have a substantially entangled and overlapping history, particularly at the RAND
Corporation in the 1950s. Despite shared historical roots, the treatment of war gaming and …