Open Strategy
This chapter examines the development of open strategy practices from the late 1990s. Open strategy involves greater transparency about strategy to internal and external audiences, and greater inclusion for internal and external stakeholders. The contemporary rise of open strategy is supported by three exogenous forces: the dissolving of organizational boundaries internally and externally, a newly democratic working culture, and new technologies, especially social media. Nevertheless, open strategy’s development still involves two kinds of arduous and fallible institutional work: ‘rule-making’ and ‘resource-organizing’. As examples of the first, Gary Hamel’s Strategos Consulting promoted new kinds of democratic strategy norms, while corporates such as IBM developed internal openness through its jams. Under the second, new consulting firms were created such as Global Business Network, while established corporations such as Barclays Bank, Nokia, and Shell had to organize new kinds of participative strategy process.