Pierre Wack was an unconventional French oil executive who was the first to develop the use of scenario planning

Scenario planning

Scenario planning, also called scenario thinking or scenario analysis, is a strategic planning method that some organizations use to make flexible long-term plans. It is in large part an adaptation and generalization of classic methods used by military intelligence.The original method was that a...

 in the private sector, at Royal Dutch Shell’s London headquarters in the 1970s. So successful was he that the Anglo-Dutch oil giant was able to anticipate not just one Arab-induced oil shock during that decade, but two.
His 1985 articles "Scenarios: Uncharted Waters Ahead" and "Scenarios: Shooting the Rapids" are considered among the first to bring the thoughts and theories of futurist Herman Kahn

Herman Kahn

Herman Kahn was one of the preeminent futurists of the latter third of the twentieth century. In the early 1970s he predicted the rise of Japan as a major world power. He was a founder of the Hudson Institute think tank and originally came to prominence as a military strategist and systems...

 into business strategy.