p.2 Strategy is a social construct... Social constructs have no physically-demonstrable
content and, therefore, mean whatever their users decide they should mean. [van Wezel and Jorna define a social construct
as a relatively persistent socially shared unit of knowledge, reinforced in its existence by its daily use (Planning in
Intelligent Systems, p.158).]
p.3 A clear and specific strategy concept helps us analyze and understand real-world strategies, but does
not constitute a set of instructions for forming them.
p.3 This book is intended to assist not just strategists, but also anyone else who requires the ability
to comprehend, explain, discuss, or criticize the coherence of an existing or proposed strategy.
p.9 Strategy is shaped by two forces: the organization's environment, and the strategist's personality.
p.9 The purpose of strategy is to maximize the extent to which the organization achieves its underlying
purpose. Forming a strategy consists of finding a general approach to achieving this, then choosing
ways to deal with the environmental forces so that as much progress as possible can be made.
p.10 The organization and its environment impinge on each other in many ways. Strategy
succeeds or fails by interacting with this environment. It succeeds by avoiding, making use of, or overcoming, the
impingements.
p.11 If the purpose of strategy is maximizing the achievement of the underlying purpose, and this depends
on how the organization deals with its environment, we need to consider the basic, generic mechanisms by which strategy
can influence this environment.
p.13 Michael Kirton reported on a stable cognitive style preference regarding change-readiness.
He called those who prefer incremental change, or modifying what has gone before to remedy its deficiencies, adaptors.
He called those who prefer discontinuous change, or discarding what has gone before and starting again, innovators...
Adaptive and innovative strategists can be expected to think and act differently.
p.41 Deliberate strategy formation is centered on strategic thinking: cognition and conscious decisions
in the strategic domain.
p.48 A strategist's task begins with mapping the feasible solution zone: the range of strategies
that seem likely to achieve the underlying purpose reasonably efficiently.
