p.559-560 Focus and clarity of purpose are vital to the effective exploitation of an organisation's resources and for achieving a competitive advantage. Yet, such a concentration of focus and attention can result in issues and events at the periphery of the organisation's awareness being neglected or overlooked: events that may threaten the very survival of the organisation or alternatively provide it with innovative ideas and opportunities for expansion and growth. Because signals from the periphery are usually weak and ill-defined and the causal links insufficiently established, there is a tendency to ignore or overlook the potential effects of changes taking place there. In such circumstances, an attenuated capacity for peripheral vision and awareness may be vital to an organisation's continued wellbeing and survival.

p.560 Day and Shoemaker defined the periphery as "wherever attention is not". For them, the periphery is ever elusive: "Each time you turn your head to look at it, you create a new 'periphery'... it is a receding horizon of perception and comprehension: an inevitable "other" created unwittingly through the very act of selective focusing. It is that neglected region which is marginalised or left out in the focusing process, but which nevertheless exerts its influence on our comprehension... the periphery is always an unnoticed "background" that insinuates itself into our subconscious.

p.561 organisations need increasingly to attend to the periphery in order to avoid being surprised by events taking place outside the scope of their focal attention... The periphery is important not just because it may threaten organisational survival, but also because it is a rich source of potential opportunity and innovation... It is a zone of vulnerability but also an open field of possibilities. Signals from such zones of exposure may inform an organisation about impending changes in competitive landscapes... significant industry changes often begin relatively unnoticed at the periphery

p.562 Awareness of peripheral happenings is thus crucial if organisations are to develop foresight and to anticipate the future.

p.567 Management consultant Gary Hamel observes that "the capacity for radical innovation increases proportionately with each kilometre you move away from HQ".

p.568 Improvisation. Improvisation occurs when spontaneous coping action takes place in response to the exigencies of the situation and in the absence of prior planning... When plans... are inadequate for guiding action in response to a pressing demand, people are forced to improvise in any way they can... Improvising people... are exploring the potentialities of structure as a source of action and change... improvised approaches, developed on the spur of the moment to tackle unexpected problems, may lead to new ways of thinking about the business... The forces of improvisation, in other words, may stretch strategic logic through practice.

p.568 Bricolage. Bricolage refers to the use of known resources in previously unexplored ways. This form of practical imagination may therefore refer to how people reorganise their resources in the face of opportunities detected at the periphery.

p.569-570 Scenarios. Scenarios may be viewed as processes of thinking through the generation of alternative stories about how an organization's environment may evolve into the future... scenario thinking is a social learning process, established around strategic conversations, reflexivity and adaptive learning. With scenarios, a team is not trying to predict the future, but instead look for a deeper understanding of the forces operating in the organisation's environment, namely those incubating at the periphery and seeping in toward the centre. [JLJ - intelligently constructed scenarios allow you to practically estimate adaptive capacity - evidence that your organization is likely to bend and stretch to meet any imagined challenge. If not, why not, and why not consider changes now that will allow you to flexibly and quickly adapt later.]

p.570 Weak signals. The most disruptive threats often come from the periphery... Changes on the far side of the periphery may silently approach the centre.

p.571 Existing evidence suggests that the cultivation of peripheral vision and awareness may be equally helpful for dealing with crisis - real or potential - as well as for taking advantage of fleeting opportunities. Increased vigilance and sensitivity to changes occurring in the environment may, in summary, be the result of the cultivation of peripheral vision and awareness.

p.572 The ideas discussed here fit into wider notions of strategy... They suggest that strategy, especially fast-changing markets, must involve the careful scrutiny of the periphery. They indicate that a complexity theory of strategy must depart from the acquired notion of strategy as focus. They suggest that organisations may transform vigilance into a dynamic competence with relevant competitive implications.