ABSTRACT
In considering what is to come, futures theorists recommend giving up the illusion of control. A good example is Tolstoy’s (1982) War and Peace comment in relation to the failed French invasion of Russia: “while Napoleon thought he was in control of events, the Russian general Kutuzov knew that neither of them were, and so he made fewer mistakes” (cited in van der Heijden, 2004, p. 206). Further affirmation that control is an illusion comes later when “Popper (1988) famously remarked that for radically new innovations to occur at all, the future must be unknowable, for otherwise an innovation would, in principle, be already known and would have occurred in the present [italics in original]” (cited in Tsoukas and Shepherd, 2004b, p. 1). The unknowability extends beyond innovation since any futures, by definition, cannot be reached in the present. Accordingly, “commitment to a particular identity brings with it the danger of losing contact with reality” (van der Heijden, 2004, p. 207). In PR we see that danger magnified as the field largely ignores the connections between previous trends, present trends, and predicted futures.
