“I begged, borrowed and stole concepts and theoretical insights from psychology, sociology and political science. And I attempted to integrate them into a holistic explanation of strategic behaviour.” Igor Ansoff
A revista inglesa The Economist inaugura a série “Os pensadores em gestão mais influentes do mundo”, uma publicação dos perfis de tais pensadores, adaptados da obra The Economist Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus, de Tim Hindle.
Todas as sextas-feiras um perfil será publicado na seção “Management” da revista online. O perfil de hoje é de Igor Ansoff, um dos mais influentes pensadores em estratégia corporativa. Confira alguns trechos:
“Igor Ansoff (1918-2002) was the father of modern strategic thinking. When Gary Hamel referred to the origins of corporate strategy he paid Ansoff an indirect compliment: “Strategy didn’t start with Igor Ansoff, neither did it start with Machiavelli,” he wrote. “It probably did not even start with Sun Tzu. Strategy is as old as human conflict.” In other words, Ansoff came of a great line passing through Machiavelli and Sun Tzu. [...]
Ansoff’s 1965 book on corporate strategy, the first to concentrate solely on the subject, was described by Henry Mintzberg, a consistent critic of Ansoff, as “the most elaborate model of strategic planning in the literature”. Although it started with a simple aim, “to produce a resource-allocation pattern that will offer the best potential for meeting the firm’s objectives”, it soon got too bogged down in detail for many readers. It contained a series of rigorous processes and checklists designed to help managers reach strategic decisions. [...]
Ansoff divided management decision-making into three: strategic; administrative; and operating, a classification that has been adopted by many subsequent writers. Several of his other ideas were picked up by other gurus and made more famous—competitive advantage (by Michael Porter), core competence (by Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad) and “sticking to your knitting” (by Tom Peters), for example.
In 1974 he moved to Brussels and worked at the European Institute of Advanced Studies in Management, a time that he described as “the most important phase of my intellectual development”. Out of this experience he wrote “Strategic Management” (1979). In 1983 he returned to the United States to become professor of strategic management at the United States International University. He also set up his own consulting business in San Diego, southern California.”
