Jay Barney and Trish Gorman Clifford tackle the gap between business school theory and real world practice in What I Didn’t Learn in Business School - (How Strategy Works in the Real World).
While the nuts and bolts of determining what customers a company will serve, which markets they will compete in, and how they will create value, are highly complex, traditional strategy tools taught in business school take little account of human interaction and political minefields. The authors approach the issue in a novel manner – literally.
This is a business novel, revolving around the hero Justin Campell, a recent MBA graduate engaged in helping a specialty chemicals firm define and execute a strategy for exploiting an exciting new textile technology. My heart went out to the painfully naive Justin as his team lets him know without too much subtlety that the state-of-the-art strategy tools he was taught for analyzing the attractiveness of potential markets for this new technology are of little use to him as he navigates the human side of strategy.
We follow his (mis)adventures as he learns the tactics necessary for grappling with the messy, human dynamics that cause havoc with a company's strategy efforts. After stumbling around like a bull in a china shop, Justin eventually grasps that anyone embarking on a new strategic initiative must realise that strategy making is part science, part art, part politics, and part change management.
The most telling comment that Justin makes is that his failure to grasp the real issues in business school is not because they didn’t teach him properly, but because he didn’t learn properly.
