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The Evolution of Strategy: Ten Perspectives on Fifty Years of Strategic Management Thinking

Tracing the intellectual roots of strategy to illuminate its future

by Masahiro Kotosaka , Jonathan Trevor

2026年10月号

サマリー：The rapid development of modern management scholarship over the past half-century reflects the accumulated insights of researchers around the world as they have confronted successive challenges. New theories have added layers to existing knowledge rather than overturning it. In practice, however, frameworks such as SWOT and the five forces command attention, while the connections between theories—and the circumstances that gave rise to them—are rarely examined. This limits our understanding of management. Used uncritically, frameworks can even impede the growth of businesses and organisations. Drawing on our experience in both management practice and research, and on the views of leading scholars, principally at the University of Oxford, we have selected ten perspectives essential to understanding fifty years of strategic management. Tracing their intellectual roots can deepen our understanding of strategy and offer insights into how companies can build competitive advantage.

Why strategy has so many meanings

Strategy can be both difficult to understand and to discuss. People use the same term to refer to quite different things: a plan for a business’s future, a move to outmanoeuvre a competitor, or an organisation’s reason for being. The strategy scholar Jay Barney was only mildly exaggerating when he observed in 2002 that there are as many definitions of strategy as there are books on it.

This multiplicity of meanings is not a product of confusion. It reflects how strategic management, as an academic discipline, has expanded its reach over the past half-century. Each era addresses a particular question. When new phenomena expose the limits of that answer, the next era poses another. Strategy has developed through these successive layers of understanding.

Consider portfolio analysis, which combined declining costs associated with cumulative production with the rate of market growth. It offered a powerful explanation under the stable conditions of rapid economic growth and remains useful today. But as growth slowed and industries diversified, new questions arose that the framework had not anticipated. Similarly, theories that located competitive advantage in internal resources explained why companies in the same industry perform differently. They also raised deeper questions: Where do those resources come from, and how are they renewed?

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Masahiro Kotosaka

Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University; Associate Fellow, Oxford Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Masahiro Kotosaka is a professor in the Faculty of Policy Management at Keio University and an associate fellow at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. He holds a doctorate in management from Oxford. After founding three businesses in retail and IT, he worked in McKinsey & Company’s Tokyo and Frankfurt offices. He subsequently held positions at Saïd Business School and Ritsumeikan University’s College of Business Administration before joining Keio’s Faculty of Policy Management as an associate professor in 2016. He became a professor in 2025. His previous appointments include visiting researcher at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Social Science, associate fellow at France’s École des hautes études en sciences sociales, and specially appointed associate professor at Hitotsubashi Business School. He also serves as an outside board member or adviser to several companies, including listed companies. His latest book is The Evolution of Strategic Management: Theory (Toyo Keizai, 2026; in Japanese).

Jonathan Trevor

Professor of Management Practice and Associate Dean for Practice and Affiliates, Oxford Saïd Business School, University of Oxford.

Jonathan Trevor is a professor of management practice and associate dean for practice and affiliates at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. He is a researcher, author, adviser, speaker, and educator in strategy and organisation. He advises the leadership teams of global companies across industries on transforming their organisations to align with their purpose. He holds a doctorate in management from the University of Cambridge and was a visiting researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He contributes regularly to Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review. His latest book is Re:Align: A Leadership Blueprint for Overcoming Disruption and Improving Performance (Bloomsbury, 2022; Japanese translation, Toyo Keizai, 2023).