Instead of Introduction
Ten deeply embedded, though narrow, concepts typically dominate current thinking on strategy. These range from the early Design and Planning schools to the more recent Learning, Cultural and Environmental Schools.1 While academics and consultants keep focusing on these narrow perspectives, business managers will be better served if they strive to see the wider picture.2 Some of strategic management’s greatest failings, in fact, occurred when one of these concepts was taken too seriously. Recall the story of the blind men measuring an elephant to one, the elephant seemed “very much like a wall”, and to another, grasping the elephant’s trunk, it felt very much like a snake. “We are all like the blind men and the strategy process is our elephant”, say Mintzberg, Ahlstrand and Lampel.3 “Everyone has seized some part or other of the animal and ignored the rest. Consultants have generally
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