We can see this lack of future scenario development and close competitor tracking has confused Microsoft.

FORBES: Get Rich, not Lost - Change your planning - Apple, Google v Nokia, Samsung, RIM, Microsoft in Smartphones

Scenario development helps them to understand what the future can be like, and drive their product development toward creating new markets with more customers, more unit sales, higher revenues and improved cash flow.

FORBES: Get Rich, not Lost - Change your planning - Apple, Google v Nokia, Samsung, RIM, Microsoft in Smartphones

Lacking a forward planning process based on scenario development, and lacking a good market sensing system that would pick up on the early market shift as novice competitor Apple started to really change the market, these companies are now falling rapidly to the wayside.

FORBES: Get Rich, not Lost - Change your planning - Apple, Google v Nokia, Samsung, RIM, Microsoft in Smartphones

In the most promising scenario, if shale development goes full steam ahead, the IEA reckons that the share of gas in the global energy mix will rise from 21% today to 25% in 2035.

ECONOMIST: An unconventional bonanza

"Simulations are seen as an important component of management development because they put people directly into a scenario, and that means there is stress and emotion, " he says.

CNN: Tackling business problems with online games