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We begin this article with a premise-that thinking is an often neglected component in the strategy courses that we teach. Recent contributions to theory have moved away from an emphasis on traditional analytic frameworks and techniques; strategy pedagogy has not. This article describes an approach that we feel shows promise for broadening our teaching of strategy to include strategic thinking.
Why this newfound emphasis on strategic thinking? We believe that in the new world of flatter, smarter, quicker organizations, to which firms increasingly aspire, the process of strategy-making differs dramatically from the hierarchical, top-down models of old. Detailed, comprehensive long-range plans, created by staff analysts and blessed by senior management for dissemination to the "troops" below, are no longer seen as the key to success. Instead, the ability to think broadly and opportunistically at all levels in the organization, within the context of a larger corporate vision, is heralded as the key to competitive advantage (Mintzberg, 1994). In this world, both senior management and the troops have new roles that no longer break neatly into separate compartments of formulation and implementation, respectively. Senior managers are called on to lead with a coherent vision that defines boundaries and to create an infrastructure that enables those closest to the customer to make the right choices. Thus, responsiveness and flexibility accrue to those organizations whose senior management think more about facilitating processes and systems and who cede much of the thinking about the traditional content of strategy at the business level to those closer to the action.
Despite these new challenges, strategy coursework has largely remained focused on how to analyze and plan in highly artificial contexts, rather than how to shape and respond in a continuous and interactive way. Our intention, as educators, has been to equip our students with a rich repertoire of tools; the outcome of our efforts, more often, has been to program students with a laundry list of techniques. We seek to give them the answers-unfortunately, many of them seem to lack an understanding of the questions.
With this in mind, we eagerly accepted our school's offer to develop a new 15-session master of business administration strategy course for the following fall. The course would serve as the transition point for students moving...