Our advice will neither be to breathlessly follow the latest fads of management or policy, nor to seek refuge in the supposed safety of established doctrines.

We will take inspiration from the great economist Joseph Schumpeter and always seek to identify prospects of anticipatory competition, where success is derived from innovation rather than from reactive alignment with patterns of behavior of others.
In terms of philosophy of science we are indebted to Karl Popper’s critical rationalism, which approaches any problem with the insight that human cognition is fallible. From this insight follows the necessity of seeking solutions to problems with what we call “strategic pragmatism”. The pragmatism we advocate is a philosophy developed by Charles Pierce and John Dewey, which considers theory to be in the service of practice and not the other way around. This philosophy eschews dogmatism. It reflects the awareness that all human knowledge is always just temporary. It demands readiness to act across the cleavages of dogmatic dissension, but also to correct and adjust one’s own action as soon as dysfunctions are recognizable.

A distinctive mark of Strategic Pragmatism is its focus on echeloned time horizons for what can be achieved short term with immediate impact based on the newest and best available knowledge, what requires more structured development over the medium term with constantly adjusted knowledge and, finally, what needs to be set as a long-term target involving fundamental reform or innovation, but with still high degrees of scientific uncertainty. If a goal is not immediately attainable, this does not necessarily justify the conclusion that it is impossible to attain. Strategic Pragmatism distinguishes itself from static dogmatism by its intensive focus on each phase of the moving time horizon.

Among the examples of Strategic Pragmatism, which we have analyzed since the beginning of the 1970’s, are the following:


1. Foreign policy strategies
2. Economic policy strategy
3. Business strategies
4. Environmental Strategies
5. Location Strategies
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