In a world of ceaseless change, how can companies ensure that their strategies will evolve as rapidly as the opportunities arising around them? A team of researchers says that the secret is flexibly organized decision-making mechanisms called Strategy Innovation Routines, or SIRs. Rarely designed deliberately by senior managers, SIRs emerge as a company struggles with crisis, and, say the researchers, companies should preserve the ingeniousness of these processes.The researchers — Robert Chapman Wood, a post-doctoral research fellow in the organizational change program at Harvard Business School; Kenneth J. Hatten, a professor of strategy and policy at Boston University; and Peter Williamson of INSEAD's Euro-Asia Centre — examined what they call the preconditions for strategy development. The research, which was funded by Strategos, the Menlo Park-based strategy firm founded by management guru Gary Hamel, follows up an observation Hamel made in the winter 1998 issue of MIT Sloan Management Review — namely, that the strategy industry does not understand where good strategy starts.The research, completed last summer, reveals that successful SIRs vary greatly from company to company.
