2. Strategic Management: A Brief History B290

3. Early years The Wharton School and Harvard Business School Vicarious learning through the case study method Little by way of –Disciplinary foundation –Wide-spread academic interest

4. Pre- 1980 –The “Planning school” - focus on process –The “Design School” - focused on structure (“Strategy follows structure”) –“Contingency theory” - resource and environment fit; one size doesn’t fit all (“Structure follows strategy”)

5. “The Watershed” (1980) –Michael Porter’s 1980 book “Competitive Strategy” –The launch of the Strategic Management Journal –Growth of management consulting –Stronger theoretical and methodological foundations –But a growing problem of lack of relevance

6. “Fin de Ciecle” Major themes in strategy research: –Diversification –Industry structure –Firm resources and competitive advantage –Dynamic Capabilities –Knowledge based view

7. Strategic Management Research It offers –Analytical frameworks, tools for seeing the wood for the trees It doesn’t offer –Silver bullet prescriptions –Much insight into the dynamics of interaction

8. However… Senior managers attend Exec Ed courses at academic business schools - Why? Some of the ideas, while abstract, provide alternative framings Reframing is the wellspring of creativity It’s a form of context switching (of which more later)

9. So: why take this course? (because you have too…) AND…

10. The study of chess… Psychologists have studied chess grand masters –To become a grand master takes 10,00 hours of study and practice (not to mention some talent)

11. So, what should White do here?

12. Intuition / pattern recognition Good chess player’s –Recognize specific situations –See general patterns –Are sensitive to cues and clues Depend as much on intuition as computational ‘horse-power’