Few people today would argue against the notion that we are standing on the threshold of a very different world. To set the scene, Gary Hamel – often described as the strategic guru of our age – published a book called Leading the Revolution in August 2000. He talks on the opening page about the end of progress, by which he means the end of the kind of predictive scientific rationalism that has been at the heart of development of business strategy for the past few hundred years.
For him, the controlled evolution of businesses towards planned success in predictable future markets – which has been so axiomatic to our thinking for so long – is a dying game, if not dead already. His new winners will be those who can imagine and then create new futures faster than they can be imagined by others. What he had to say, unlike most management commentary, resonates with truth. And he is very convincing.
