The Mind of the Strategist

Abstract

The article introduces a series of papers on strategic leadership. A natural outgrowth of psychologist Robert Sternberg's triarchic theory of intelligence is an interest in leadership development, taking the form here of WICS--wisdom, intelligence, and creativity synthesized. Sternberg argues that leadership is premised on intelligence, not just because a healthy dose of cognitive ability is necessary, but because practical intelligence--particularly as it relates to the formation and use of tacit knowledge--comes close to describing and explaining what leaders display. Larry Greiner teams up with Arvind Bhambri and Tom Cummings to search for a strategy to teach strategy. They begin by covering the Business Policy course, from its 1912 inception at Harvard Business School through the subsequent 1946 expansion of its primary pedagogy, the case, to all courses in the Harvard Business School curriculum, and eventually to most schools across the country. The benefits of case methodology as historically practiced, they argue, are best understood via an experiential learning perspective as a means to bridge the much-bemoaned knowing-doing gap.