The Economist | Management guru: Igor Ansoff
Last year, The Economist began a series of profiles on “the world’s most influential management thinkers, past and present.” The first to be profiled was H. Igor Ansoff – considered to be the Father of Strategic Management.
(Link: Management guru: Igor Ansoff | The Economist.)
The Economist’s profile of Ansoff is a nice overview of who Ansoff was and how he fits in history, but a couple additional points are worth making here:
Ansoff has strong local ties to the San Diego area: he was a distinguished professor at USIU (now Alliant University – located off Miramar Road) for 17 years, where he honed his theories, published books, and mentored future strategic thinkers – his son is currently a professor at Alliant and at least one of Ansoff’s students carries on his mantle by teaching Ansoffian strategic management at the University.
Ansoff was one of the first people to identify and define environmental turbulence and how it effects business decisions.
Following up on the idea of environmental turbulence, Ansoff introduced his Strategic Success Hypothesis, which states:
A firm’s potential is optimum when the following three conditions are met:
- Aggressiveness of the firm’s behavior matches the turbulence of its environment.
- Responsiveness of the firm’s capability matches the aggressiveness of its strategy.
- The components of the firm’s capability must be supportive of one another.
Ansoff was an engineer, and Russian-born at that, so his language is not always the easiest to understand, but the general idea here is that any business must evaluate the turbulence of the environment in which they operate (Ansoff provides a 5-level scale ranging from Repetitive to Unpredictable) and match their strategic aggressiveness, capabilities, and responsiveness as required. Otherwise, resources will be wasted and opportunities will be missed. It is important to note that overly aggressive strategy in a low-turbulence environment is just as wasteful as slow responsiveness in a fast-paced environment.
In my opinion, the Strategic Success Hypothesis is one of the most under-valued tools of business management today. By understanding the importance of aligning the ‘triplets’ of Ansoff’s equation (turbulence, aggressiveness, and responsiveness), any organization can quickly and easily evaluate where they are, where they are going, and what they need to do to get there.
I will discuss the Strategic Success Hypothesis in more detail later. In the mean time, here is a list of some of Ansoff’s books and writings:
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Tags:alliant university,Igor Ansoff,management guru,management thinkers,Strategic Management,Strategic Success Hypothesis,strategic thinkers
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