"In war everything is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult."
-Carl von Clausewitz

Dialectic Thinking

Dialectical thinking in the Strategy Institute focuses mainly on the works of Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz, known as the "philosopher of war."

Clausewitz's philosophy of decision making, which follows classical Greek dialectics, does not yield easy answers but leads the thinker through extreme options, thus expanding the opportunity space. Clausewitz defines war, for example, by describing its extreme manifestations (political influence versus physical destruction). The business world is full of such polarities, including

In his exploration of the forces that bind or separate opposites, Clausewitz shed light on the range of possible options. He was not aiming for an ultimate synthesis in which the extremes have disappeared. On the contrary, he emphasized how opposing notions are related to and include each other. Consider, for example, strategy and operations: strategy without operations is lame; operations without strategy is blind.

Publications on Dialectic Thinking

Clausewitz on Strategy: Inspiration and Insight from a Master Strategist

For the Strategy Institute's first book project, Bolko von Oetinger and Tiha von Ghyczy chose to focus on Carl von Clausewitz's 1832 classic, On War. To provide expertise on Clausewitz, historian Christopher Bassford joined the team. They have edited the book so that its focus is on pure strategy rather than just military strategy.

The group understood that Clausewitz would appeal to the real strategist, who knows that even revolutionary change requires solid intellectual analysis. Such a strategist believes in the visionary power of the leader, the richness of opposing options, the value of seizing a sudden chance, the value of the prepared mind, and the advantage of a real surprise.

Bolko von Oetinger, Tiha von Ghyczy, and Christopher Bassford, Clausewitz on Strategy: Inspiration and Insight from a Master Strategist (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2001).

Clausewitz on Strategy, which has been translated into six languages, is about making decisions in a highly uncertain environment.

"Leadership in a Time of Uncertainty", BCG Perspectives, January 2002

Globalization, the rise of India and China, and environmental issues such as climate change are shaping and redefining our world, making this a time of great uncertainty. Bolko von Oetinger shows how nineteenth-century Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz described three basic dimensions of leadership in a time of uncertainty: the intellectual imagination to embrace polarities, the personal courage to act decisively, and a practical engagement with the details of execution. In conjunction, they should help broaden the option space of the strategist.

Die Fundamente der Strategie (The Foundations of Strategy)

Bolko von Oetinger explains how Clausewitz's definition of strategy can serve corporate executives in formulating and implementing the best corporate strategy for their business. The essay demonstrates that getting back to Clausewitz can help reformulate the concept of strategy, regarding it not merely as a management toolbox but also affording it the much broader approach it deserves.

Bolko von Oetinger, "Die Fundamente der Strategie-Carl von Clausewitz' Begriff der Strategie als Maßstab für Unternehmensstrategie," in Perspektiven der strategischen Unternehmensführung, Festschrift für Werner Kirsch zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Max J. Ringlstetter, Herbert A. Henzler, and Michael Mirow (Wiesbaden: Gabler-Verlag, 2003), pp. 3-23.

Available only in German.


"An emperor could be created somewhere other than at Rome."
-Tacitus

Spatial Thinking

We often hear of the "death of distance" and the "global village," which give the impression that space is irrelevant in today's global economy. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The world might have grown smaller on a communication-based scale, but space has not shrunk. Spaces are social and cultural constructs issuing from human interaction. Managers who aim to discover new growth opportunities for their enterprises should move to the frontier of the known markets and businesses.

The unexplored spaces are in the periphery, where, instead of having sharp borders, border spaces are ever-changing. Occupying these spaces means creating value for the business and its clients.

The notion of space may be the most fundamental underpinning of strategic thinking. Strategy is all about exploration and movement through a space: we must leave our current location, navigate through uncharted and perhaps changing space, and arrive intact and on time at a destination favorable to further departures.

We can choose the spaces we want to inhabit, but apart from any given moment and the near future, we are not free to move in time. This is where the opportunities and the challenges arise for the strategist of spatial thinking.

Publications on Spatial Thinking

"Constructing Strategic Spaces" BCG Perspectives, November 2006

This brief article argues that "space" is an important modality of strategic thought. Strategic spaces are the fruits of free imagination and disciplined construction. Tiha von Ghyczy shows that our minds allocate attributes to space in an act of creative construction and divide space into the categories of physical, social, and representational space.

Constructing strategic spaces is essential to a successful segmentation, which thus fosters a clear focus on innovation and success.

"Center and Periphery," BCG Perspectives, June 2007

History teaches us that the center does not always remain uncontested. Outsiders in the periphery often traverse the distance to the center and conquer it. By contrast, it is much harder but not impossible for the center to make its way to the periphery. However, says Bolko von Oetinger in this article, those who occupy the center usually recognize their vulnerability only when it is too late. Every business competes in a dialectical space between the center and the periphery.

"Die Renaissance des Raumes" ("The Renaissance of Space")

In this article, Bolko von Oetinger explains how we can adapt the spatial turn in humanities to business strategy. A well-known application of spatial thinking concerns the contrast between center and periphery. The center of a business or industry is always a depository of beliefs describing its historical success. These beliefs work to hamper innovation.

Nothing hinders the emergence of something new more than the successes of the past. Fundamental innovation in any given industry, therefore, often comes not from established market leaders, but from outsiders-that is, from the periphery.

Bolko von Oetinger, "Die Renaissance des Raumes" ("The Renaissance of Space"), Harvard Businessmanager (October 2004), pp. 34-43.

Available only in German.


"What is good for society is good for business"
-Jack Welch

Thinking in Social Modalities: Business and Society

Trust is declining in most industries worldwide. Mistrust in an industry or company leads to higher transaction costs, including larger lobbying and advertising budgets, increasing customer-acquisition costs, and climbing litigation fees.

Business must get back into society to stem the rapid decline of trust in globalization and capitalism in general. Management must ask itself, Is our business a microeconomic transaction organism, or does it have a much broader role as an agent in civil society?

Where global groups fail to see themselves as part of society, they are very soon under attack from public opinion. Businesses have the opportunity to set their own standards before the state intervenes by acting as a regulatory body.

  • No matter what causes mistrust, businesses must adapt to mistrust in ways that are not traditionally seen as being part of globalization.
  • To the extent that the mechanisms of disenchantment and resistance to globalization are at least in part valid, business behavior may fuel the forces of mistrust contrary to its own interest.
  • Neither convergence nor divergence in a globalized society is necessarily bad for business. Only wrong adaptation is, and business is far less prepared for divergence than for convergence.

Multiple Modernities in Business and Society

The tensions between company and society are, strictly speaking, tensions between companies and societies. Many cultures outside Europe and North America regard Western (capitalist) universalism as a threat to their cultural identity. Today we can say, The more modern the world, the less universal and less Western it is. Managers have to get used to this changed environment.

The goal of this project is to gain a thorough understanding of the drivers and implications of the phenomena of different cultural perceptions in modernity. For this purpose, we first explored the academic world, set up a workshop in Berlin in May 2001, and invited 12 sociologists, historians, and economists from leading universities-scholars known for their expertise on multiple modernities. This term is academic shorthand that describes a world with a multiplicity of cultures, as well as common modern economic and political features.

In the future, economic thinking will not suffice for the formulation of sound business strategies. The fate of business strategies will increasingly be determined by social and cultural factors of the environment.

The workshop papers are collected in Reflections on Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese & Other Interpretations, published in 2002 by Brill Academic Publishers. The issues covered range from academic perspectives on divergent forms of capitalism to the possibilities for intercultural dialogue.

We discussed our evolving ideas with senior executives during two symposiums and found that we should aim to find solutions that ensure that different cultures are not uprooted by globalization. Our task is to come up with ideas for tapping globalization's productive capital.

Publications on Social Modalities

"Größe Verpflichtet" ("Size Obliges")

In this article, which followed the Business and Society project, Bolko von Oetinger and Martin Reeves discuss why size obliges and how management can learn to take on social responsibility by making the following considerations:

Adapting Self-Conception. Key drivers for regaining trust and ensuring future economic success include anticipating the regulator by applying self-restrictions, developing codes of conduct, having the clearest foresight for taking on environmental problems, and taking charge in modernizing training systems and work structures.

Responding Faster-Strategically. The more companies are in the limelight, the more difficult it is for boards-especially in Europe-to correct errors that have a strong social impact, without being criticized publicly. For this reason alone, low-key (early) changes are always more cost effective than noisy (later) ones.

Understanding Problems of Trust-in Detail. Problems of trust are complex, elusive, and emotional phenomena. To defuse them, managers have to fractionalize them. In the food industry, for example, what in particular is being criticized? Can parts of that problem be solved? Such questions require responsible managers to respond specifically and individually on behalf of their companies.

Setting Standards. Many solutions do not depend solely on an individual company's good will: solutions must be industrywide, all companies cooperating together. A top manager has to support not only a global agreement process in the industry. He can also influence industry opinion and the general public, getting them to move slowly in the right direction.

Developing Measurement Methods. There are not yet appropriate metrics for the role of a company in civil society. Companies are measured by criteria that are different from what they should be. Success is not only economic success. Success has to incorporate social parameters. Is it not necessary for market leaders to set these standards and metrics too? Initial strategies-for example, the triple bottom line-unite economic, ecological, and social parameters in a type of consolidated balance sheet of the company.

Adapting Organization. In the last ten years, global corporations have cared more about their global strategy than the cultural differences of the countries and cultures in which they operate. To be a respected (and successful) player in today's world economy, a company's focus has to shift from a global approach to a regional approach.

Bolko von Oetinger and Martin Reeves, "Größe Verpflichtet" ("Size Obliges"), Harvard Businessmanager (January 2007): pp. 60-66.

Available only in German.

Multiple Modernities: European, Chinese & Other Interpretations, papers presented at Multiple Modernities Conference, hosted by the Strategy Institute of The Boston Consulting Group, May 20-21, 2001, in Berlin, ed. Dominic Sachsenmaier and Jens Riedel with Shmuel N. Eisenstadt; preface by Bolko von Oetinger (Boston: Brill Publishing, 2002).

Die Marktwirtschaft im Zeitalter kultureller Herausforderungen-Eine Initiative zur Rückkehr des Unternehmens in die Gesellschaft (Market Economy in the Age of Cultural Challenges-An Initiative to Bring Business Back into Society),Conference of the Strategy Institute of The Boston Consulting Group in the Wissenschaftszentrum, February 11-12, 2004, in Berlin, ed. Bolko von Oetinger, Tiha von Ghyczy, Bernhard Giesen, Dominic Sachsenmaier, Jens Riedel, and others. Available only in German.

" Introducing T-Shaped Managers-Knowledge Management's Next Generation"

The knowledge economy demands a new kind of executive-one who freely shares ideas and expertise across the company while remaining fiercely committed to business unit performance. T-shaped managers care for both their business units and the company as a whole. But they must be carefully cultivated.

Morten T. Hansen and Bolko von Oetinger, "Introducing T-Shaped Managers-Knowledge Management's Next Generation," Harvard Business Review(March 2001), pp. 107-116.


"Poetry keeps clean the tools of thought"
-T.S. Eliot

Poetic Thinking

Poetry can help us think strategically. A poem is thought, experience, and emotion distilled into a tightly controlled form that uses words, images, sound, and rhythm patterns to create a complex set of meanings that constantly form and reform themselves. A poem's components take it beyond argument into a realm where expectations of a single analyzable meaning are deliberately questioned and subverted.

All art does this, but poetry does it in a particularly condensed and therefore intensive way. A poem is a puzzle with multiple, inexhaustible, coexistent, and interchangeable "solutions"—each more or less dependent on the others for validity.

The desire for closure (which drives most business considerations) and the desire to pursue the shortest route between A and B won't get us anywhere at all when we're faced with a poem. Business leaders too often develop their abilities in quantitative, linear thinking at the expense of nonquantitative response. Reading poetry encourages a fresh focus on these emotional, contextual, and cultural issues. It also requires that one enjoy the experience of poetry and want to become an astute reader. But the skill can be learned and, once acquired, should be transferable, for example, to responding to complex, strategic situations.

Reading poetry encourages a fresh focus on these emotional, contextual, and cultural issues.

Publications on Poetic Thinking

"Poetry in the Boardroom"

This roundtable discussion sets out the ideas developed by Clare Morgan, a professor of English literature and creative writing at the University of Oxford, that emerged from an investigation conducted by the Strategy Institute on the relationship between reading poetry and strategic thinking.

"Poetry in the Boardroom: Thinking Beyond the Facts: A Roundtable Discussion among Clare Morgan, Kirsten Lange, Ted Buswick, and Nancy Healy," Journal of Business Strategy 26 (January-February 2005), pp. 34-40.


"A mind once stretched by new thoughts can never regain its original shape."
-Albert Einstein

Metaphorical Thinking

In strategy, we focus on cognitive metaphors, which differ from such other modes of comparison as analogy, model, and rhetorical metaphor. A metaphor links two domains that do not properly belong together and causes us to understand both domains in new ways.

The "simple" metaphor, or rhetorical metaphor, which is widely known in business language, is exemplified by the viral-marketing concept. Here, a familiar concept (an infectious virus that passes from person to person) is presented to the audience to shed light on a less familiar idea (a new form of marketing that uses e-mail to spread a message). Another example, guerilla marketing, is understood as a form of "underground" advertising.

A cognitive metaphor, on the other hand, often uses something unfamiliar (for example, evolutionary biology) to spark creative thinking about something familiar (business strategy). A cognitive metaphor gives us not only a new vocabulary but also a whole new way of seeing. It has a cognitive as well as a linguistic function.

By juxtaposing two seemingly unrelated domains of reality, the cognitive metaphor reeducates us about the world we know, revealing connections we had not previously discovered. The power of a metaphor resides in its ability to inspire novel ways of experiencing the familiar.

The Strategy Institute runs Strategy Gallery, BCG's "metaphor engine." The Gallery is a collection of more than 250 exhibits on strategy from fields as varied as sociology, physics, philosophy, and literature.

Publications on Metaphorical Thinking

"The Fruitful Flaws of Strategy Metaphors"

This essay explains the theory of the cognitive metaphor and its relevance to business, demonstrating that although many managers try to draw business lessons from other disciplines, most do it badly. Rather than being seduced by the similarities shared by business and another field, managers need instead to identify places where the metaphor breaks down. This is where the process of strategic thinking starts.

Tiha von Ghyczy, "The Fruitful Flaws of Strategy Metaphors," Harvard Business Review, September 2003.

"Wanted: Chief Ignorance Officer"

Ignorance management is arguably a more valuable skill than knowledge management. Mastering it requires learning four basic principles:

  • The Principle of Deferment: Resist the temptation to fill every vacuum of ideas with ready knowledge.
  • The Principle of Prematurity: Be willing to accept and adjust to unforeseen circumstances.
  • The Principle of Irrelevance: Explore the seemingly irrelevant through metaphor and analogy.
  • The Principle of Waste: Recognize that the only way to get one good idea is to get lots of ideas and then identify the best.

Addressing these four principles is the first step to using the richness of ignorance.

David Gray, "Wanted: Chief Ignorance Officer," Harvard Business Review, November 2003.

Hänsel und Gretel und die Kuba-Krise (Hansel and Gretel and the Cuban Missile Crisis)

Hansel and Gretel and the Cuban Missile Crisis, gift-giving rituals among the Trobriand Islanders, and Alexander von Humboldt's journey to Orinoco: these three events and histories provide a few of the 13 ways to see strategy from new angles. Through them we can encourage today's managers to ask questions that are not obvious but are essential for the success of their business.

In this volume, the author covers such topics as innovation, change, orientation in a crisis, human resources management, departures in business, detours, redefining the rules, space, and identity.

Bolko von Oetinger, Hänsel und Gretel und die Kuba-Krise, 13 Wege Strategie Neu zu Denken (Munich: Carl-Hanser Verlag, 2006).

Available only in German. This is also available as an audio book.

"In Praise of Feedership"

Calls for competitive excellence are often buttressed by grim references to the twin notions of "survival of the fittest" and the "struggle for existence." A closer look at the biological marvels of parasitism reveals that much may be gained by lowering one's defenses.

The parasite needs to be smart: it lives on the host, but it must not kill the host. This essay by Tiha von Ghyczy generates many questions for further thinking: What can we, considering such challenges as climate change and man-made environmental damage, learn from parasites? Why did the dinosaurs—in a Darwinian sense, the fittest life forms on earth—perish, while the parasites survived? And do we have parasitic relationships in business as well? If so, how can we make good use of them?

Tiha von Ghyczy and Janis Antonovics, "In Praise of Feedership" in Breakthrough Ideas for 2005 (Boston: Harvard Business Review, 2005).