Prediction kills

Purpose – To emphasize the importance of assessing impacts, rather than focusing on probabilities, in strategy. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presented is a viewpoint/opinion/column. Findings – This column attempts to demonstrate that attempts to predict certain types of outcomes through complicated mathematical models can actually be dangerous, because they induce in decision‐makers a false sense of security and take their focus off of the potentially huge impacts of the prediction being wrong. Originality/value – The paper presents an alternative way of viewing future uncertainty to the dominant spreadsheet‐model quantitative predictive approach.