Includes bibliographical references (pages 296-303) and index.

List of figures -- List of acronyms -- Introduction to strategic work, language, and value. Introduction ; What does "strategic" mean? ; Intention and context ; Data difficulties ; People-based difficulties ; Four paradigms of strategic work and talk ; Corporate strategy's beginnings ; Convergence of practitioner and academic inputs ; Methodological questions ; Consultants' inputs ; Academics' inputs ; Talk and communication ; Historical methods ; Profit and growth ; Summary -- Strategic analysis : consulting tools. On method ; Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) ; Learning and the experience curve ; Life cycle ; What is going on here? ; Break-even ; Porter's 5-force analysis and economic rents versus Chandler's "fit" approach ; Ansoff's strategy matrix ; BCG and some other matrices ; Organizational change ; Knowledge and k-flow ; Scenario planning ; Culture stakeholders ; Triple bottom line and the theory of sustainable society ; The balanced scorecard ; Goldratt's theory of constraints ; Summary -- Strategic analysis : academic models. On the academics' method and questions ; Value-chain and team production ; Principal-agent theory ; Transaction cost economics ; Horizontal and vertical integration ; Penrose on the growth of the firm ; Resource- and capabilities-based views ; Evolution and self-regulation ; Entrepreneurship theory ; Strategy-as-practice ; Summary -- Building language and the business model. On this chapter's method ; The strategic task ; Mise en place ; Data collection ; BM as language ; Exploring language ; BM as diagram ; Von Clausewitz's methodology ; Changing the BM ; Summary -- Persuading supporters. Talk ; OK, we have a strategy, now what? ; Communication ; Rhetoric ; Question theory ; Strategic change ; Summary -- The business strategist's world. Making management's knowledge ; Practical philosophizing, or how manages do not think like academics ; History and the private sector firm ; Technology ; Labor and work ; Management education ; Self-preparation ; Summary ; Concluding remarks -- Appendix A: on case-writing and teaching -- Appendix B: teaching from this book -- Appendix C: some strategy texts and their implicit theory -- Appendix D: further reading -- Index.

"Emphasizing that firms face uncertainties and unknowns (knowledge gaps) [the author] argues that the core of strategic thinking and processes rests on the organization's leaders developing newly imagined solutions to the opportunities that these uncertainties open up. Drawing on a wide range of ideas from strategy, economics, entrepreneurship and philosophy he stresses the importance of judgment in strategy, and argues that a key element of the entrepreneur and executive's task is to engage chosen uncertainties, develop a language to express and explain the firm's particular business model for dealing with these, and thus create innovation and value. At the same time he shows how the language the strategist creates to do this gives the firm identity and purpose, and communicates this to its members, stakeholders, and customers."--Jacket.

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