The wicked challenge of the business environment

Abstract

Today's business environment has seen the emergence of ubiquitous and increasingly significant forces. Three such 'mega-forces' are the inevitability of globalisation, the imperative of innovation, and the importance of shared value. These forces are significant individually, but when they interact they generate powerful phenomena, namely, disruptive technologies, conflicted stakeholders and unknowable futures. The confluence of these phenomena gives rise to wicked problems. The mega-forces and the resulting wicked problems make traditional techniques of strategic analysis ineffective and require new approaches to strategy making. Recognising how the phenomena generated by the mega-forces give rise to wicked problems provides firms with guidelines for dealing with the distinctive and daunting challenge posed by these wicked problems.