Strategie und Leadership

Abstract

Strategy development has traditionally been exclusive (i.e. job of the top man- agement team) and secretive (to protect competitive advantages). Web 2.0 tech- nologies offer new opportunities for internal and external collaboration, allow- ing more open and participatory modes of strategizing. These new approaches, labeled as "democratizing strategy", "open strategy", "open-source strategy" or "strategy as a practice of thousands", involve a large number of people in gener- ating, discussing, and evaluating strategic ideas. In this paper we develop a framework to describe different types of open strategization, based on the two dimensions "strategy phase" (development versus implementation) and "inclu- sion scope" (internal versus external inclusion). The resulting four approaches are described with four cases. We also review potential benefits and risks of open strategy.