The Three Doors: An attention shift process to break through the sustainability trilemma for oil production enterprises

The energy trilemma, the trade-off between energy security, affordability, and environmental sustainability, can be represented as a sustainability trilemma for International Oil Companies (IOCs). Emissions reduction to mitigate climate change requires significant decline of oil production, which is antithetical to the IOC business model. The net zero business model options have thus far been insufficient to break through the sustainability trilemma for IOCs and achieve business, environmental, and socio-economic sustainability. Rather than being trapped by a trilemma, could the oil production sector experience an unexpected, profound systemic change that builds wealth, grows asset value, while also driving down oil production? This article presents a research investigation to develop an attention shift process for the oil industry. A business model that breaks through the sustainability trilemma represents a huge opportunity for an IOC and would be greatly important for the critically short timeframe of achieving net zero, but currently there is little focus on designing such a breakthrough business model for an IOC. This research gap motivated the development of a process and supporting framework to shift attention towards the design of breakthrough business models for IOCs. This work presents the novel Three Doors Process which utilises the novel Three Doors Framework to shift workshop participants past the inadequacies of current options, and towards the design of business models which breakthrough the sustainability trilemma for IOCs.