Among managers who make strategy and researchers who study it, fierce battles have been fought over the right way to discover a strategy. In one corner stand advocates of analysis, deliberation, and planning: Managers should study the competitive forces in their environment, deduce a set of choices that helps the firm confront those forces, and then implement the choices. In the opposite corner are those who support what’s termed an emergent approach: Managers should try things out, learn from experience, adjust, and gradually craft a strategy.
A version of this article appeared in the January 2008 issue of Harvard Business Review.
