Strategic thinking
Strategic thinking is a mental or thinking process applied by an individual in the context of achieving a goal or set of goals. As a cognitive activity, it produces thought.
Not to be confused with Strategic planning.When applied in an organizational strategic management process, strategic thinking involves the generation and application of unique business insights and opportunities intended to create competitive advantage for a firm or organization.[1][2][3] It can be done individually, as well as collaboratively among key people who can positively alter an organization's future. Group strategic thinking may create more value by enabling a proactive and creative dialogue, where individuals gain other people's perspectives on critical and complex issues. This is regarded as a benefit in highly competitive and fast-changing business landscapes.[4][5][6]
Strategic thinking and Complexity[edit]
In a complex scenario, organizational actions are intensified by a global network of interactions, leading to diverse environmental, economic, and social challenges.[26][27][28][29] This complexity is characterized by intricate networks and recursive cause-and-effect relationships, diverging from the linear logic of Cartesian thought and the punctual logic of dialectical thought. Within such systems, seemingly trivial actions can produce unexpected outcomes or be magnified by intricate relationship networks, resulting in entirely unpredictable consequences [28][29][30]
To address this context, Terra and Passador[28] advocate for strategic thinking capable of: (1) reconnecting phenomena across different levels and disciplines and treating them holistically; (2) addressing objects of study subjected to recursive causality; (3) understanding facts through their dynamics; (4) approaching problems through mappings and negative approaches; (5) integrating non-empirical elements; and (6) incorporating a new mathematical rationale to navigate the non-linearity of such systems and the continuous transition between certainty and uncertainty inherent in their dynamics.
In the realm of academic research, Stacey [27] suggests that this reality demands studies in the field of strategic thinking to focus on explanation, hypotheses about whole systems, their dynamics, and the relationship between dynamic behavior and innovative success. In this type of study, methods such as scheme construction, phenomenological approaches based on deductions and metaphors [31][28] and integrative frameworks [32][33] have been employed to understand the dynamics of various organizational problems by assimilating concepts common to several fields of science.[28] In the field of studies on strategic thinking, several authors have developed multidisciplinary approaches based on these premises, utilizing systems thinking and cybernetics,[29][34] integrative approaches,[32] new mathematics of chaos,[29][30][35] and concepts such as order through noise, autopoiesis, and self-organization.[29][35]