The Evolution of Strategy
Every era gets the strategy it needs. Porter solved the biggest problem of the 1980s β it isn't the biggest problem anymore. So what's the missing piece for ours?
Michael Porter solved the biggest strategy problem of the 1980s. It isn't the biggest strategy problem anymore.
For most of us, strategy is taught as a collection of frameworks. Drucker. Ansoff. Porter. Mintzberg. Prahalad and Hamel. Kim and Mauborgne. Christensen. Rumelt. Roger Martin. McGrath.
We learn their models, their matrices, their theories. We read their books.
But perhaps there is another way to understand the history of strategy β not as a collection of theories, but as a series of missing pieces, added one at a time.
The Missing Piece, Decade by Decade
Every time the business world changed, yesterday's strategy became insufficient. And a thinker emerged to address the new problem.
Ten thinkers, ten decades, ten unsolved problems. Each one picked up exactly where the last left off β not because the earlier work was wrong, but because the market had moved on and left a gap only a new idea could close.
Read the timeline as a relay, not a ranking. Every entry inherits the one before it, and hands something forward to the one after.
Look at the pattern in how "strategy" evolved over the decades:
Every major thinker added something the previous era could not fully explain. Not because the earlier thinkers were wrong or not smart⦠because the world had changed.
And this is perhaps the most important lesson from the history of strategy:
"Every strategic breakthrough solved yesterday's problem. None could solve tomorrow's.
The Lesson From a Century of Strategy
What Is the Missing Piece for Our Era?
So here is the question I have been asking: what is the missing piece of strategy for our era?
I have spent the last few years exploring that question. The answer begins with a fundamental change in the market: customers no longer merely choose β they compare. And increasingly, they compare everything.
And A.I is allowing that comparison to happen at a scale not known before.
Want to read the history of the Evolution of Strategy in detail?
Download the free PDF booklet β link given on this page.
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