Seven out of 10 Calgary businesses surveyed in an annual poll say the energy industry is going through “a fundamental shift,” and they don’t expect the old days to return.

“A number of companies are still sitting back and crossing their fingers, waiting for the price [of oil] to come back,” said Adam Legge, president of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, which co-sponsored the poll. “But the large majority of people are saying that’s not going to happen.”

The annual poll by Calgary Economic Development (CED) covers some 700 local businesses across a range of industries. The Chamber joined the project this year for the first time.

“Notably,” CBC News reports, “the opinions of energy- and non-energy sectors were quite different.” Most respondents were more positive than not. But a 10-point difference separated those in energy, where about 60% of respondents reported that they expected 2016 to be better for their business than 2015, than in other sectors, where about 70% of respondents were similarly optimistic.

CED CEO Mary Moran said the province’s business and finance capital needs to up its game. “We have a very science-based population, and although we do have some entrepreneurs, I would say it’s remarkable how few marketing and sales skills there are in this economy,” she said.

Legge agrees that the city once known as ‘cow-town’ before it became focused on oil needs to expand its competencies. “We had a product that the world just bought, regardless of what the price was. That’s not normal,” he conceded.

“So now, we’re getting to a place where we actually have to operate like a savvy, sophisticated group of businesses in a global market,” Legge added. “We want people to start thinking, ‘How do I find new customers, how do I make new products?’ We have world-class companies in this city that do oil and gas really well, so let’s find out if they can do geothermal, can they go to a new country, can they take an existing product or technology and tweak a little bit and sell it to a new industry.”