The Harvard Business Review article that introduces The Strategy Script.

https://hbr.org/2023/02/your-strategy-needs-a-story

Link to article: https://rdcu.be/b4AKb

ABSTRACT - For strategists working in and for firms, acquiring knowledge about the business world is dependent on a rational process of collecting, organizing, and interpreting information. As such, these individuals are best conceived not as knowers, but as self-directing learners who are motivated to acquire, create, and apply new knowledge. To facilitate these processes, in this paper an axiomatic foundation for strategic thinking is established regarding the nature of the object of strategic thinking, the nature of strategic thinking, and the nature of knowledge. Next, four boundary references set by these axioms are used to establish a new conceptual frame of reference for strategic rationality. Interconnections between the boundary references are subsequently used to infer six canons for strategic rationality. It is concluded that strategic rationality may be found where all references overlap. Finally, to contribute towards greater...

Foresight is a top-rated scientific journal published by Emerald Publishing. In November 2019 it published Dr. Roeland van Straten's article on how to understand value creation. Two ideas are presented that are fundamental for a refined understanding of strategic decision making. 

IDEA 1: It is possible to present a framework that shows the logical, organisational and mathematical relationship between all key financial value related parameters ('how to understand value creation').

IDEA 2: It is most useful to reserve the term 'strategic' for thinking that reduces the uncertainty of incoming cash flows only. What relates to outgoing cash flows is fundamentally different, that's optimization.

What is presented in this article is more elaborately explained in The Strategy Academy.com's 'Art of Sensemaking' course.

Article link: https://www.growkudos.com/publications/10.1108%252Ffs-12-2018-0111/reader

I WANT A FASTER HORSE!

The steam locomotive. It was not an instant crowd pleaser when it was introduced in the early 19^th century. Sure, it promised to have extraordinary power, be incredibly fast, and able to cover a lot of ground. Many people, however, could only see one thing: it wasn’t simple. And the horse and carriage was. It was an undeniable truth. The steam locomotive was much more complex than a horse, or a carriage, and it certainly took more time, effort and skill to build. Even worse, the designing alone required all kinds of new knowledge about difficult stuff like thermodynamics and mechanical engineering. Why would anyone bother with this solution when there is no problem? Why not continue to breed ever faster horses? Good point.

STRATEGY CONSULTING IN A WISDOM AGE

This article is dedicated to how the want of wisdom could invigorate strategy consulting, and how the Model for Strategic Wisdom is able to guide this quest in practice. And by...

“Getting published is what counts. But we struggle with relevance.”

Can you guess how many divisions there are in the Academy of Management? The number is: twenty-four, including one for Management Consulting and one for ‘Strategizing Activities & Practices’. After attended my first AoM conference in Chicago, I now know this (and so do you). For this I owe thanks to the participants who kindly showed me how things work in academia. In return, I promised to share my observations, and think about how scholars could connect more with us professionals. Or practitioners, as they like to call us. Well, here it is. To be clear, my ideas relate to ‘strategic management’ only, being the field that overlaps with my professional experience.

The doctors left the building?

Just so you know, this observation was already shared with several scholars, and it made them laugh, so I think I am safe. In a nutshell: given what (little) I know about strategy...

Dear Friends,

Hereby I happily announce that on 22 December 2017 I will present my ‘bible’ of strategic thinking to the world. I will do this by defending a 448 page PhD thesis that could envigorate strategic thinking and strategy teaching for decades to come.

In this document I state that for strategy to enter a wisdom age, we ultimately need some sort of outline for an all-encompassing and unifying thinking exercise that guides the strategist from ‘ignorance’ to ‘wisdom’. To this end, the thesis presents an elaborate new Model for Strategic Wisdom that maps in full the yet unchartered field of how to think when it comes to strategy 

The Model I present embraces the notion that we should detach ourselves from our desires to rush decisions, and instead seek to distinguish the true from the false and the facts from their unfounded assumptions, and then choose among courses of action. As you will learn, such wisdom is all about...

This article argues that change is needed in how strategy is being taught at business schools. It also states that The Strategy Script™ model that is taught at The Strategy Academy offers a well-specified solution for two major problems in business teaching: a lack of practical integration and not enough room for critical reflection. At the end, I present my vision for the future strategist.

 CHANGE IS INEVITABLE

The most prominent places to learn more about the business world is by attending a business school. Business schools generally promote themselves by stressing their high level of business analysis and case studies and their cutting-edge theoretical knowledge. When looked at more closely, this analysis is mostly financial analysis and the presented theories usually concern the conceptualization of past events, abstract business phenomena, or the listing of different acting options. This content reflects an empirical view of the world, as you would expect from an...