Visuals in Open Strategy

doi:10.1017/9781108347921.013

Chapter 12 - Visuals in Open Strategy

from Part III - Technological Assemblages for Open Strategy

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 July 2019

Sotirios Paroutis and

Edited by

Georg von Krogh and

David Seidl: Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Georg von Krogh: Affiliation:
Swiss Federal University (ETH), Zürich
Richard Whittington: Affiliation:
Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

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Summary

Examining Open Strategy through the role of visuals holds great promise. Visual artifacts are increasingly central to what organizational actors do inside and outside their firms, for example, with the growing use of visualization tools, big data analytics, presentations (e.g., PowerPoint), user-centered design approaches, visuals in social media, and videoconferencing dominating modern strategy analysis (Berinato, 2016; Boxenbaum et al., 2018; Kim & Mauborgne, 2002). Through the use of these visuals in their strategy process, firms can communicate their strategic direction to internal and external audiences and actively engage these audiences in particular aspects of their decision making, which could in turn, open new, yet unexplored, avenues for their strategy. As such, visuals open up the opportunity to communicate and engage with a much less strategically informed set of actors than is the norm in strategy, for example shop floor workers or stakeholders such as citizens in local communities. This is possible since visuals can reduce cognitive challenges (Täuscher & Abdelkafi, 2017; Hegarty, 2011) and make such challenges more widely accessible compared to more traditional strategy formats (such as memos or reports that often require familiarity with strategy terminology to be understood).

Type: Chapter
Information: Cambridge Handbook of Open Strategy , pp. 205 - 218

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108347921.013 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2019

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