PLANNING FORWARD BY LOOKING BACKWARD - RETROSPECTIVE THINKING IN STRATEGIC DECISION-MAKING

Retrospective thinking occurs whenever one remembers something from th e past, but one can also think retrospectively about hypothetical futu re events, by imagining that the event has already transpired and then working backward in the mind from the future toward the present. Desi gners, artists, planners, and other creative individuals utilize retro spective thinking when they mentally envision the object they wish to create and then think about how it might be constructed. Some theorist s and some previous research have suggested that forward and backward thinking are different cognitive processes, but there has been little investigation on the nature of these differences. This article examine s the literature. and describes a laboratory study designed to investi gate retrospective thinking as a technique for increased idea generati on. Subjects (n=64) were professional planners and managers with an av erage business experience of over 20 years. In a planning task, signif icantly more ideas were generated in the retrospective thinking mode t han in the prospective mode, but the ideas were not found to be of gre ater quality. Evidence emerged that a subset of subjects were better a ble to make use of the retrospective technique, suggesting that select ion along with training may be appropriate for the technique's most ef fective use.