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n business, the future is never an abstraction: it’s a concrete horizon of goals and rapid transformations calling for immediate decisions. The future is built today as we anticipate trends, redefine business models and plan strategic investments. What will be the energy of the next 30 years? Who will have more resources? Which will outweigh which, the raw materials of the old economy or the power of computing and software? The structure or the superstructure? Which will outweigh which, the ships that carry goods or the cables that carry data? Demography or technology? How will national leaders behave? Which will outweigh which, winning at the polls or the success in governing?

 

With elections in more than 60 countries, 2024 resolved democratic challenges in the European Union and the United States. However, France and Germany remain two great unknowns. The beating heart of the European Union, the axis that has held up the destiny of the Old Continent, the Franco-German engine, has jammed. Germany will vote in February, while in France it will be impossible to vote before July, maybe, and while the Macron epic slides into its twilight, the game grows ever more intricate.

One fact above all sheds light on the mutability of our scenarios: the only Economy minister still in office following the Stresa summit (held just this last May) is Giancarlo Giorgetti, from Italy, a country that has long considered unstable that has now become Europe’s the most reliable. How will this reversal affect the European equilibria in political terms? We will soon find out, and the outcome will shine especially bright in the energy sector.

 

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he same holds for the United States, where a new administration, with an old acquaintance—Donald Trump—at the helm, is beginning a new adventure in a scene completely transformed since 2016. All sorts of plans are being made and all kinds of scenarios outlined, but we inevitably underestimate the unpredictability of history, which proceeds not in a straight line but in leaps and bounds.  In the words of one of the great thinkers of modern Western philosophy, Arthur Schopenhauer, “the most suitable simile [of life] would be that of a game of chess, where the plan we determined to follow is conditioned by the play of our rival,—in life, by the caprice of fate.”

“the most suitable simile [of life] would be that of a game of chess, where the plan we determined to follow is conditioned by the play of our rival,—in life, by the caprice of fate.”

Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to technology, invention and discovery. Eni, for one, has many investments across a range of sectors, including research in the frontier of star energy, otherwise known as magnetic confinement fusion. One can make many assumptions, calculate probabilities, but in the end, destiny is a roll of the dice, a stroke of individual genius, the steady hand of a leader. We are entering an era where elves stand on the shoulders of giants and can change a script many thought had already been written.