Strategic thinkers and their characteristics: toward a multimethod typology development
, , , et | 30 déc. 2021
À propos de cet article
Article Category: Empirical Paper
Publié en ligne: 30 déc. 2021
Pages: 313 - 330
Reçu: 02 déc. 2020
Accepté: 15 oct. 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/ijme-2021-0024
Mots clés
© 2021 Katarzyna Piórkowska et al., published by Sciendo
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Synthetic view on strategic thinkers’ differentiating features and their examples
| Attitude to change and uncertainty [ |
Exploiter/focus on continuity/low acceptance of uncertainty | Andy Grove (Intel) |
| Explorer/focus on change/high acceptance of uncertainty | Steve Jobs (Apple, Pixar, Next) | |
| Information processing and decision-making style [ |
Holistic view/fast decision-making | Jeff Bezos (Amazon) |
| Analytical view/slow decision-making | Bill Gates (Microsoft) | |
| Perception of environmental hostility and approach to other actors [ |
Focus on competition/environment perceived as hostile | Travis Kalanick (Uber) |
| Focus on cooperation or game/environment perceived as friendly | Dirk Rossmann (Rossmann) | |
| Reliance on data [ |
Rational/calculating | Elon Musk (SpaceX, Tesla, PayPal, Hyperloop) |
| Generative/intuitive | Howard Schultz (Starbucks) | |
| Level of participation in strategic thinking [ |
Individual thinking | Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) |
| Collective thinking | Phil Knight (Nike) | |
| Reliance on purpose and orderliness [ |
Strategic thinking as a deliberate process/strategy making as a ritual | Tim Cook (Apple) |
| Strategic thinking as an emergent process/strategy making as an event | Sam Walton (Walmart) |
Strategic thinking – selected definitions (ordered by year)
| Strategic thinking reveals a process of thinking about an organization and how to go about developing a strategy, which includes vision, creativity, flexibility, and entrepreneurship. | |
| Strategic planning is based on linear and rational thinking, whereas strategic thinking is based on the need for recognition of new possibilities and the ability to pull pieces together into a big picture. Strategic planning and thinking involve two distinct thought processes: |
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| Strategic thinking is a process that deals with futures, patterns, trends, and nuances that require the ability to sense emerging opportunities. | |
| Strategic thinking includes five elements: having a system perspective, being intent-focused, thinking in time, being hypothesis-driven, and acting in an intelligently opportunistic manner. | |
| Strategic thinking reflects the thinking of multiple issues concurrently and the ability to synthesize them. | |
| Strategic thinking reflects the seeking of innovation and imagining new and very different futures that may lead a company to redefine its core strategies and its industry. | |
| Strategic thinking reflects the way in which people in an organization think about, assess, view, and create the future for themselves and their associates. | |
| Strategic thinking is a way to solve strategic problems, combining a rational and convergent strategic approach with a creative and convergent thought process – systems thinking, creativity, and vision. | |
| Decision-makers using strategic thinking are characterized by the following traits: (1) continuous interaction between the two brain halves, which means the use of whole-brain capabilities; (2) their disbelief in environmental determinism goes along with the essence of strategic thinking, which emphasizes the role of managers in affecting their environments; (3) obvious tendency toward the future and change; (4) since strategic thinking is the result of the interaction of all the othertypes of thinking, it must also have the characteristics of the other types of thinking. | |
| Strategic thinking is thinking about possible scenarios and strategy in a creative manner that is relatively free from existing boundaries. | |
| Strategic thinking occurs when a person contemplates the future of an organization taking into consideration its environmental and competence variables. | |
| Strategic thinking is a distinctive management activity, whose purpose is “to discover novel, imaginative strategies which can rewrite the rules of the competitive game; and to envision potential futures significantly different from the present”. Furthermore, strategic thinking was specified as being conceptual, systems oriented, directional (linking the future with the past), and opportunistic. | |
| Strategic thinking is a combination of information processing (data-driven activity) and creativity (creative imagination). | |
| One of the most important hallmarks of strategic thinking is systems thinking, comprehended as a way of understanding reality that emphasizes the relationships among a system's parts, rather than the parts themselves. | Godet [2010] |
| Strategic thinking involves two distinct thought processes: planning and thinking. |
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| Strategic thinking involves three different processes: collecting information, formulating ideas, and planning actions. | |
| Strategic thinking means the generation and application of business insights on a continual basis to achieve competitive advantage. | |
| Strategic thinking reflects an ability that enables an individual to understand, visualize, and confront the given context. | |
| Strategic thinking is a vital leadership competency, which is described as the ability to synthesize and utilize intuition and creativity in order for an organization to achieve an integrated perspective. It is also defined as a mental process that involves synthesizing, as well as utilizing intuition and creativity to identify and solve problems. The process is meant to improve organizational performance through innovative and creative activities that enhance overall leadership effectiveness. |