Umair,

Good examples. Especially the less expected P&G circa Lafley. Thanks.

I know this response will seem obvious, so I won't belabor it: A leap of faith ALWAYS requires the commensurate willingness to fall with style. And therein lies the wall. Intuition. Guts. Trust. It's hard work convincing yourself to believe, to have faith. Thanks for continuing to shine a beacon.

Scott

Combining edge type strategies to business - one cant help, but think about other types of combinations of strategy and edge - primarily: political edge strategy (scary in the wrong hands) and military edge strategy (even scarier in the wrong hands - think terrorists, but now with added edge! OMG)

anyhoo, back to:

business strategy bit

Business and strategy is a bit like chicken and egg. If you can see the future (of business, or even politics, military) - it's very easy to have an understanding of a situation after it has happened (hindsight).

The BEST strategy, always - is having the ability or knowing the future (obv).

In discussing this, Umair, I think you need to include the additional components wrt strategy to put the 'imagination' part into context:

Textbook Strategy has always relied on (still applies - crisis or no crisis - orthodox or non-orthodox) on artfully aligning/allocating resources, 1.) who (network/people) 2.)what - mission/goals/tactics and 3.) Why - vision/incentive/motive/imagination/passion

In less turbulent and volatile times - there is a heavier reliance on 2) some on 1) and very little on 3).
Not so much Strategic Imagination
Why?
cuz' you can get away with it.
This is what I like to think - incremental strategies are. You eventually orient yourself in the right direction, but very haphazardly (squiggly line fashion). I guess, this is the nature of iterative, fine tuning/calibrating tactical plans.

In more turbulent/volatile times (like, right now!) a heavy reliance on 2) and 1) - does not help you - you'll get thrown of course.

You need a far far heavier dose of 3) or as you phrase - strategic imagination.

Someone described "Dorothy's yellow brick road and the wizard of Oz" as an analogy to strategy (as an aide-memoir and attribution - if someone could fwd the link again - I loved it) -

- Vision/passion/incentive (there's no place like home)
- Mission (to get home by finding the wizard)
- acquiring the lion, tin woodsman,scarecrow value network.

Well, the sign of the times wrt to strategy using this anology is:

Dorothy is stranded in the land of Oz, but unfortunately she has amnesia (she does not even know what home is!!), and her companions the: lion, tinman, scarecrow have no courage - heart or brains ALL combined!

What makes the situation even more precarious is - when they complete their mission by following tactics (a long winding yellow brick road) to the wizard - Dorothy does not know why she is even there!! - Mission failure. doh!

Ray

Gulp. I'm guessing at least part of that "toxic" statement is directed at me.

Let me clarify what I, at least, meant by "naïve". It wasn't regarding the awareness of entreneurial projects, which I think might be naive, but isn't a problem.

The naïve part I think, and I'm willing to back off that word, is in the assertion that this is unique. Strategies are always changing, and I'm not sure I believe that there's such a thing as a orthodox strategy. Most entrepreneurial activities challenge orthodox approaches. You examples are great demonstrations of that, but none of them have to do with the information hiding problem the first post hinted at.

I think what I'm getting at (and I'm still working through this and catching up to your clearly well thought out arguments) is that most technological and macro shocks cause great strategy changes because the equilibrium of the current strategy choice set changes and losers might become winners, etc. But that's not unique to this shock, most shocks have that, the 70s inflation and oil shock decimated existing winners and begat an entrepreneurial explosion. The public spending shock after WWII did something similar. I agree its a great time to try something new, I just think we might benefit more from looking back at similar shocks to see what worked and what didn't before simply changing tack.

I might still be misunderstanding you, but I do hope you don't believe that I'm suggesting it's foolish to try something new and different.

Incrementalists are still playing a game built on scarcity (=capital, people, value chains), IP protection and one-way messages to be sure.

Saying that leveraging scarcity and/or IP protection are no longer viable strategies at a large incumbent company is like saying that the book you've really enjoyed reading is finally onto the denouement. Time to move on, get a new book.

Firms that are active in seeing what's coming on the horizon understand that "test and grow", or what you might be calling being naive, is becoming a much more important facet to strategic growth. Firms that primarily copy others are not well suited to test and grow (=failures require learning on the fly and fast responses), hence, leaders using this philosophy will be hard to fast follow.

How about this as another perspective to strategic imagination:

The information required to imagine the future is tacit, not explicit. It is known by those immersed in it, those that feel it, but it's nebulous, changing and you can't write directions for it.

By the time that same information becomes explicit (so you can write directions for it), it's no longer on the edge, so it's no longer an advantage.

With the decreased cost of transactions and the corresponding increased speed of them, sources of advantage become tacit not explicit. Hence the leap of faith required to bring them to fruition.

Which reminds me of the two fish, an old one and a young one. The young fish looks at the old fish and says, 'What do you think if this water?'

The old fish says, 'What's water?'

Umair... as always... I respect your insights. I will say though that you often point to google as a great example of your points and in many ways they are.

That said, some people would say that over the past 3-4 years google has fast-tracked itself to emulating some of the perceived negatives of Microsoft. The biggest example people point to is the hiring. Google has hired so quickly and so broadly it's simply impossible for them to maintain the level of quality they once had in their staff (and by extension - their products).

I'm a fan of both google and microsoft, but i think it's reasonable to wonder about the relative pros and cons of having so many people on staff, and that the numbers alone mean that google inherits many of the same problems that microsoft faces both internally and externally.

My question is: while they're still different companies with different dna, at what point do they resemble each other enough (independent of their genetics) where you stop using google as an example, or start using microsoft as one?

strategic imagination is the by-product of strive for excellence which in turn is the outcome for individuality / niche / competance / brand. I am of the view that tried strategies can be repeated and belive that no strategies are the same.

For an amazingly successful example of long-term strategic thinking, examine Alcoholics Anonymous. Seventy years of self-supported service[they don't take money (or other valuables) from non-members, and limit members' contributions or bequests to $2000 per year], an annual budget (for their New York office) of ca. $12 million, and millions of lives transformed.

While I accept your premise, I'm a little bemused by the purpose of your list of examples. It's almost definitional that few companies are able to identify and successfully cultivate new areas of competitive advantage, but the fact that some do is nothing new. It happens all the time. Am I misunderstanding you?

You wrote: "The surest, most lethal killer of strategic imagination is being reined in by orthodoxy: thinking that tomorrow must be like yesterday."

Well said. An accurate description of the state of the American church.