Strategy Safari
(Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand, and Joseph Lampel)

Why Read It?

The landscape of strategic management, according to the authors, is a wilderness—confusion reigns, the most heterogeneous forms of thinking coexist, and there is no recognizable order or structure. This book offers itself as a jargon-free guide to those who wish to explore the wilderness. Its objective is to clarify and critique a variety of approaches, which the authors have shaped into distinct schools of thought. It ends with a plea for synthesis.

Getting Started

The authors present eight “schools of strategy” and compare them to one another. They explain their premises, criticize their weak points, and show under what conditions each particular doctrine can bring success. But these theories do not stand alone; they are parts of a larger whole, and the important thing is to integrate them.