"A mental representation is a model of reality held in the mind of an individual, who can use this representation to generate predictions about reality. Mental representations are especially important in strategy because they allow managers to consider alternative strategies in an `o -line' manner. That is, mental representations allow managers to consider the merit of alternative strategies without the need to actually invest in and carry out the various options. Of course, such `modeling' is inevitably imperfect and di fferent representations may off er better or worse characterizations of the likely payoff s in an actual business context. Thus the quality of managers' mental representations is a basis for performance diff erences, and a firm's prior history may have a considerable influence on the mental representations adopted by their managers.Isto está relacionado com:
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A fundamental characteristic of mental representations is that they account for only somedimensions of the represented reality. In strategy, the reduced dimensionality of mental representations helps explain why `frameworks' are pervasive in the field. Frameworks - which provide simple, typically two dimensional representations of the complex underlying strategy context - suggest the dimensions that a mental representation should include.
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A framework is useful to the manager because it reduces the high dimensionality of strategic problems and so makes them tractable within the bounds of the manager's cognitive capacity. Because frameworks incorporate only a subset of the problem's actual dimensions, multiple frameworks can apply to a given strategic problem.
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Thus, an important problem that managers face is to choose the dimensions of the representation - the `lens' or `fi lter' - through which to view their business landscape. That any landscape looks much di fferent under diff erent representations exposes a problem with how the literature has conceptualized the process of searching for a strategy."
"firms create value as they formulate, identify, and solve problems.
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At the firm level, scholars have looked at the origins of value held in resources, accumulating experience, and developing capabilities, as well as in a firm’s governance. Some have argued that the “locus” of value creation exists at higher levels and thus have placed emphasis on factors such as the evolution of industries or interorganizational relations and networks. In fact, one of the central trends to emerge from recent research is a diminished focus on the firm itself as a central unit and source of value and an increased focus on value creation that originates from linkages with disparate environmental constituents [Moi ici: Os ecossistemas] (e.g., users, customers, suppliers, and universities).
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Value creation only occurs when a focal firm somehow discovers a bargain, namely, a solution with value that exceeds the price paid. Moreover, even such value creation may be short lived if competitors can access these same solutions at similar prices. Thus, discovering firm-specific bargains among solutions demands some kind of firm specific filter, a filter that enables the firm to sift through the abundance of possible and ready-made solutions, to discover those that might offer the firm unique value.
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Vital to a firm’s capacity for value creation is its ability to generate value for customers or offer common value at a uniquely low cost. Uniqueness is the discriminator between creating value that flows solely to customers and creating value that is at least partially captured by the focal firm. Value creation for the focal firm therefore demands that firms discover or solve unique problems, namely, problems or solutions unseen by or inaccessible to others.
Identifying common problems and discovering common solutions are unlikely paths to value creation, because these common problems and solutions are accessible to direct competitors as well.
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We contend that, for a given focal firm, the path to value creation typically originates with a cognitive effort to compose and develop a unique and firm-specific theory of value creation, in other words, a theory of and for a specific firm. This theory may reveal assumptions about the evolution of consumer tastes, define an unmet customer need or unaddressed problem, offer insights into the under- or overvaluation of assets in markets, or highlight a problem in the production of a product or service. The theory essentially defines a set of problems for which resolution is hypothesized to create the value foreseen.
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The central vehicle for value creation, then, lies in composing and updating the firm’s theory and using it to formulate problems, organize solution search, and select from among available need–solution pairs.
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humans, including managers and entrepreneurs, have a unique capacity to engage in forward-looking theorizing about possibilities beyond extant realities, theorizing that uniquely guides attention and observations. We argue that theorizing, then, isn’t the unique domain of scientists but in fact a universal human capacity that shapes human perceptions and behavior more generally. Importantly, theorizing is not simply the process of environmental observation or representation, learning or information processing, which suggests a rather passive conception of rationality and mind. Rather, theorizing is an active effort to project into the future and to imagine possibilities beyond what might readily be observed. We thus build on a very particular view of the human mind, one that does not rely solely on stimuli but instead focuses on the unique expectations, guesses, hypotheses, and theories that the mind constructs as it interacts with the environment.
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In economic settings, an individual’s capacity to recognize valuable problems and solutions depends on beliefs and attention, which are in turn shaped by the unique theories actors hold."
Trechos retirados de "Crossroads - Strategy, Problems, and a Theory for the Firm" publicado de Organization Science, de Teppo Felin e Todd R. Zenger (2015)
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