#37 Why Perspective Shapes Strategy - with Prof Bob de Wit

Yeah, well, you know, the philosophy of my book is indeed based on what we call different perspectives.

So what I did in my book, Strategy and International Perspective, is give an overview of the whole strategic field, the whole strategic leadership field, and make a distinction between the strategy process.

And the strategy process is a process to come to a strategy or to change a strategy or to innovate.

The strategy content, which is the strategy itself, can be at the business level strategy, can be on the corporate level, can be in the network level, but that's more focused on the content.

So what you do, the process is more how you do it, but the content is what you do.

And then we have the context and I make the industry context because that changes over companies, the international context and the organizational context.

So that is about the context.

So it's process, content, context.

These are the three, let's say, sections of my book.

And that's how my book actually started.

What I said in the beginning, I found the books, the strategy books in the beginning of my career, too much American and too much English.

Now, what does it mean? That means that if you look at the international context, you see different perspectives on the same topic.

For example, if you want to change, a strategic change in this case, then some cultures are more focused on evolutionary change.

That has to do with the cultural background.

And some are much more radical, more revolutionary change.

Now, what you saw in those books in that time was that they make a choice from American or English perspective, assuming that was the right answer.

While if you look internationally, you see it is not the right answer.

It is maybe the right answer in a certain country or a certain culture, but not internationally.

And then I went into the strategic literature and then I saw there's a lot of debate on each of the topics that I mentioned.

Is it evolution or revolution? And what's the basis of your strategy? Is that the market or is that your resources? For example, if we talk about innovation, is it about improving the current business or is it more radical rejuvenation and developing a new business model? That's also innovation.

So for all the topics in my book, I developed the two perspectives.

And I said, well, basically it is because a strategic problem is not a problem to be solved.

It's not a puzzle.

You know, you have to balance two different kind of perspectives.

And it depends very much on the context and it depends very much on the issue itself.