A disruptive scenario intervention for managerial coping with disruptive change

Research on disruptive change has identified gain framing and perceptions of control as important cognitive drivers underlying heterogeneity in how incumbent firms respond to such change. Research in social and cognitive psychology further suggests that structured representations of future developments may support these cognitive mechanisms by making future events more vivid, actionable, and strategically relevant. Building on these insights, we use the design science research methodology (DSRM) to develop the Disruptive Scenario Intervention (DSI), a scenario-based intervention designed to support managerial coping with disruptive change. The DSI combines a narrative representation of a disrupted future industry state with a structured depiction of the development path leading to that state. Its purpose is not to predict the future, but to foster gain framing and strengthen perceptions of control among managers confronted with visible but insufficiently acknowledged disruptive trends. We demonstrate the application of the DSI in the European engineering consultancy industry. Our paper contributes to the literature on scenario-based strategy tools by developing and demonstrating a theoretically grounded intervention tailored to a specific application domain. In addition, it contributes to research on incumbent inertia by introducing a design-science-based artifact that can serve as a foundation for future empirical research on the cognitive and strategic effects of scenario-based interventions. We therefore position the DSI as a complement to established multi-scenario approaches in specific contexts, rather than as a replacement for them.