The oil and gas industry is amazingly unable to predict oil prices. What is probably the largest industry in the world, with the biggest companies and corporations in the world, employing large large numbers (thousands) of bright people at high salaries and using large sophisticated and complex computing power, yet they fail to forecast the price of their one product (crude oil). Not only the oil industry but many other industries throughout society and history consistenly fail to forecast correctly. Forecasts are driven by historic data and trends and are based on a scientific big data analytical approach. This paper argues that in the fast changing dynamic modern world, such an approach misses emerging trends, patterns, break points and game changers. It loses the space for the unexpected and for blue sky thinking. The paper considers some examples of forecasts in the energy sector and it asks questions about how future energy use may really develop. The paper then considers some wider questions about how the past drives the future. In a data driven world, to really understand the future, non data driven approaches are needed. The ideas in this paper are developed and expanded from a presentation which Mr Cameron gave to a G20-Y conference at Évian-les-Bains in France in 2017.

Steyn Heckroodt has completed his PhD from University of Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa. He is currently the Dean of Academic Affairs at Jumeira University in Dubai and practicing Harvard Business School Publishing Moderator in the Mena region. He has many publications and has attended many conferences. He contributed largely to the breakthrough in providing businesses with an enhanced scanning framework with a systems thinking approach, enabling businesses to maintain their competitiveness amidst the larger environmental challenges presented in

Ever since the introduction of business environmental scanning frameworks in the late 1970s and early 1980s, business leader’s entrained thinking was sculpted by their ability to apply a scanning framework based on analytical thinking, primarily. These frameworks were largely based on the basis of breaking things into smaller manageable bits. An example that comes to mind is that of the PESTLE framework is framework taught strategists and scenario planners to view the business environment through the flters of politics, economy, social trends, technology, legislation and environment (green), as silo components of the larger business environment. is method consisted largely of listing the features of each component without considering the interdependence, interconnectedness and interrelatedness between these components, an oversight that largely led to an incomplete representation of the complete and whole business environment. Fast forward to 2018 and we are confronted with environmental challenges of mammoth proportion, largely due the pursuit of business competitiveness at the cost of the environment. To address the global environmental sustainability challenges facing humanity today, business leaders need to fundamentally change the way they view, scan and analyze the environment. For this to happen, we need to fundamentally change our thought paradigm about the environment within which we operate and conduct business. is paper aims to introduce such a reframed framework through which businesses can scan the environment systemically, as opposed to merely analytically, leading to a more complete representation of the environment and enabling competitive sustainability and environmental sustainability to co-exist.