Professor George Wright

Personal statement

George Wright PhD, ScD

My publications have accumulated over 21,000 citations in the Google Scholar database and my h-index is 61: My Google Scholar page. According to an evaluation by Tiberius et al ("Scenarios in business and management: the current stock and research opportunities", Journal of Business Research, 2020, vol 121, p235-242), I am the most productive author in the World in the topic area of scenarios and also the World's most cited - in terms of average citations per year to my scenario-focused journal publications.

I have undertaken a wide range of consultancy and workshop-based assignments in scenario thinking and decision analysis. I have also designed and delivered management development workshops on decision making, scenario thinking, and strategic analysis, for a variety of public and private sector organizations across the world. 

I worked at directorate level within the UK Government Department of Health with scenario thinking and Delphi applications. For a video of this work see: NHS scenarios . I worked with the leadership of Bayer CropScience on food supply issues using scenarios - I led workshops convened in Gemany, France, India, Singapore, and the USA. Another scenario project, funded by the Australian Research Council, utilised a new scenario method - developed with George Cairns - to aid senior members of the regional government, union leaders, business leaders and industrialists develop policy for regeneration priorities within Tasmania.  Recent projects provided training/advice on use of the Delphi technique to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and advice on developing energy transition scenarios to Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) Plc. I also recently worked with the chief executive and the senior leadership team of Wood Group Plc on scenarios to do with the energy transition. I have just completed a project, with Peter McKiernan, developing post-COVID-19 scenarios for the Glasgow Business Resilience Council. I am currently working with Region Midtjylland, Denmark on designing scenario thinking interventions to develop resilence in the central region's health-care provision. Another current scenario project is with Merck (known as MSD in the UK) on the future of healthcare data ecosystems. The following link contains a recent presentation of mine on scenario thinking and COVID-19: Covid-19 talk

I previously held academic positions at Leeds University Business School, London Business School, Strathclyde Graduate Business School (where I was Deputy and Acting Director), Durham Business School (where I was Head of the Department of Business and Management) and Warwick Business School (where I was Associate Dean for Executive Education and a member of the Senior Management Team). I was awarded a higher doctorate, Doctor of Science, by Warwick University in 2013. 

I teach "Exploring the International Business Environment" on the Full-Time MBA Programme. This course is part of the Strategy spine of the Strathcyde MBA - which was rated as the fifth highest quality in the world in the Financial Times'  January 25th 2016 ratings of Global MBA offerings. I was presented with a Teaching Excellence award for my teaching at a Strathclyde Students' Association ceremony in May 2016. In October, 2020, I taught scenario thinking within the Guardian newspaper MBA "Masterclasses" series.

My books include "Scenario Thinking: Preparing your Organization for the Future in an Unpredictable World" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, co-authored), "Scenario Thinking: Practical Approaches to the Future" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, co-authored), "Decision Analysis for Management Judgment" (5th Edition, Wiley, 2014, co-authored), "Strategic Decision making: A best practice blueprint" (Wiley, 2001), and "The Sixth Sense: Accelerating Organizational Learning with Scenarios" (Wiley, 2002, co-authored). 

Research interests 

I research into the role and quality of management judgment in decision making and in anticipating the future. Are such judgments well-made or are there pitfalls and flaws? In fact, sometimes judgment is flawed and decision aiding techniques - such as scenario thinking and decision analysis can be utilised to improve judgment and decision making. The following link is to my July 2022 keynote talk on scenarios and judgmental forecasting at ISF Oxford: Keynote. For a presention on this issue for a less-specialist audience see: Accessible version

Recently, I led a US National Intelligence Agency project on group-based judgment (January, 2017 - December, 2018) that brought an income of £1.1 million to Strathclyde Business School. In November, 2022, I was honoured to be nominated by the UK Ministry of Defence and appointed as a member of the NATO Panel on "Prediction and Intelligence Analysis". In August 2023, I was nominated and appointed as a member of the NATO Technical Team on "Anticipatory Intelligence for Superior Decision Making".

I am the founding Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Behavioral Decision Making: JBDM. Several recent Nobel prizewinners in Economic Sciences have published within the pages of JBDM and the 2017 Nobel prizewinner, Richard Thaler, published his eighth most-cited journal article in JBDM. Until I recently stood down, I was a Senior Editor of the journal Decision Support Systems and an Associate Editor of two forecasting Journals: International Journal of Forecasting and Journal of Forecasting. I am Editor-in-Chief of the new-start Wiley journal, Futures & Foresight Science, that was first published in March, 2019: F&FS. Here is an interview with me on the content and focus of F&FS: F&FS Editor interview

My publications have appeared in a range of US-based management journals - including Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Management Science, Risk Analysis and the Strategic Management Journal. In Europe, I have published in journals such as Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, and European Journal of Operational Research. 

I have edited special issues of Futures, International Journal of Forecasting, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change on the topics of Delphi methodology, scenario methodology, and group-based judgmental forecasting.