This concept may be introduced into anticipatory decision-making activity in order to increase the ability of organizations and governments to adapt to surprises arising in turbulent (business) environments.
[1][2][3] Arguably the best known work in wild cards comes from John Petersen, the author of Out of The Blue – How to Anticipate Big Future Surprises.
[5] Building on Petersen's work, futurist Marcus Barber developed an additional wild card tool called a "Reference Impact Grid" (RIG) in 2004 which helps strategists and risk managers define vulnerabilities within a given system and to then consider what type of event might destabilize that system.
[6] A cascading discontinuity set can achieve a similar outcome to a one off wild card via a series of smaller, unplanned events that eventually come together to overwhelm the system's ability to cope.
[8] Some authors plea for a better understanding of the nature of events that people share under the concepts as wild cards, black swans, breakthroughs and so on.