Strategic approaches always offer alternatives and choices. AUTO.RIA and DIM.RIA of RIA>COM Group have charted their course with Strategic®, and the project is underway.
What alternatives exist? From metaphors to professional terms — ten distinct approaches emerge.
1. “Strategy as Improvisational Jazz”
- Professional term: “Emergent Strategy” (Henry Mintzberg)
- Core concept: Strategy emerges less from paper plans than from action itself. Team and leader improvisation generates more relevant solutions than rigid plans.
2. “Strategy as Navigating by the Stars”
- Professional term: “North Star Strategy” or “Vision-led Strategy”
- Core concept: The star represents Vision and values. Once established, they remain relatively fixed, while the path adapts to market storms and context.
3. “Strategy as Gardening”
- Professional term: “Ecosystem Nurturing” / “Complexity Thinking”
- Core concept: Creating conditions for self-organization rather than control. Companies grow as organisms in complex environments. A popular development tool in Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) approaches.
4. “Strategy as Theater”
- Professional term: “Narrative Strategy” / “Sensemaking” (Karl Weick)
- Core concept: Strategy encompasses not just plans but stories that resonate with markets. Playing with meaning, not just KPIs.
5. “Strategy as Expedition”
- Professional term: “Explorative Strategy” / “Discovery-driven Planning” (Rita McGrath, MacMillan)
- Core concept: The future being uncertain, strategy becomes a series of hypotheses and discoveries, not a single map.
6. “Strategy as Bio-ecosystem”
- Professional term: “Business Ecosystem Strategy” (James Moore, Adrian Slywotzky, BCG/Accenture frameworks)
- Core concept: Companies aren’t isolated players but network participants. Advantage builds through partnerships, platforms, and symbiosis.
7. “Strategy as Playing Go”
- Professional term: “Blue Ocean Strategy” (W. Chan Kim, Renée Mauborgne) and “Game-based Strategic Thinking”
- Core concept: Not point victories like chess, but gradually creating space and avoiding competitive fields.
8. “Strategy as Plastic Art”
- Professional term: “Design Thinking Strategy” / “Adaptive Strategy”
- Core concept: Strategy forms through constant “sculpting” — prototypes, iterations, adaptation to change.
9. “Strategy as Flow”
- Professional term: “Agile Strategy” / “Dynamic Capabilities” (David Teece)
- Core concept: Strategy isn’t a document but an organization’s ability to sense and respond quickly to change.
10. “Strategy as Hackathon”
- Professional term: “Co-creation Strategy” / “Open Strategy”
- Core concept: Strategy emerges collectively: teams, partners, even customers contribute to solution development.
The chosen path? A hybrid between “Strategy as Navigating by the Stars” and “Strategy as Gardening.” Through carefully crafted methodology, accounting for industry specifics and platform business models, teams will learn and co-create their future. Results from these strategic workshops lie ahead.