Strategic Thinking in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Strategic thinking stands at a cross road. A myriad of disruptive forces are undermining almost each and every conceptual and operational premise. Deep rooted frameworks built by classic authors from Ansoff and Porter to Drucker and Mintzberg are being disrupted and seem unable to weather a torrent of environmental and functional challenges. Disruption is coming from everywhere. There is the economic and sociological and there is the technological and the political. They all are constituting a whirlwind with erosive and long lasting impact. Technology qualifies as the most penetrative among the disruptive forces. Artificial intelligence technologies are emerging as potent drivers of change. They are introducing the human brain as a template for managerial thinking, data as seed of decision making, machines as learning instruments, computing software as source of cognition and machine learning as a mode of managerial analysis. Revolutionary currents undermining the very contours of the concept. The implications are far reaching. Issues as decision making, leadership, strategic thinking, and strategic control and even managing of self, have to identify new parameters.