Dear Ann:

I remember an author whose name is Quinn who coined the name "incremental strategy" (in spanish "estrategia incremental"). You can read some book by himself or several readings by Scholes/Whittington/Johnson or Mintzberg et al in "Strategy Safari". According to Quinn, managers have an initial strategy they pretend to use, while developing it they realize certain problems so they have to adapt it. These steps are small compared to the first one, so that´s why he speaks about "incremental strategy".

Regards

Gustavo Concari

Thanks for the responses!

@Milan B. Vemić - I liked that you included ambidexterity. I hadn't previously considered it but I think exploitation & exploration are very fitting comparatives.

@Hans Kuendig - To answer your question, yes, a strategy can be bottom-up or emergent. (Or at least a number of scholars in the strategy process research stream believe so). I appreciate your comment about the duration of formal strategic plans decreasing. I think this will be a good addition to the problem statement in my research.

@Gustavo Concari - Quinn's logical incrementalism looks like it is just what I was looking for. I didn't come across the term through my database searches but I'm vaguely familiar with this work and believe it fits really well.

Dear Ann:

I´m glad my ideas were useful. You are right, the correct name of the idea Quinn proposed was "logical incrementalism".

Regards

Gustavo Concari