Science, Strategy and War The Strategic Theory of ... - Boekje Pienter

he wants to get across in an example. He concludes with a slide which answers the fourquestions he offers as his outline at the beginning of Strategic Game of ? and ? 37 .Approach, or building snowmobilesThe outline is as follows 38 :What is Strategy?What is the aim of purpose of strategy?What is the central theme and what are the key ideas that underlie strategy?How doe we play to this theme and activate these ideas?Boyd wants to reminds his audience of the importance of combining both analysis andsynthesis and the relevance of continuously generating mental images. This has two reasons,one of which was discussed before in his essay. Here it also serves different purpose.Without a conviction that this combination is indeed a useful approach for increasingknowledge, the following sections - the broad survey - of this presentation does not makemuch sense. But if you are convinced, the broad survey will lead you to novel and valuableinsights, and the argument Boyd builds upon the broad survey will be considered valid, evenwhen Boyd links the study of strategy to the study of Alzheimer’s disease.This time he asks his audience to join him in a mental exercise. As Boyd states,‘Image that you are on a ski slope with other skiers[…]. Imagine that your are in Floridariding in an outboard motorboat, maybe even towing waterskiers. Imagine that you are ridinga bicycle on a nice spring day. Image that you are a parent taking your son to a departmentstore and that you notice he is fascinated by the toy tractors or tanks with rubber caterpillartreads’ 39 .‘Now imagine that you pull the ski’s off but you are still on the ski slope. Imaginealso that you remove the outboard motor from the motor boat, and you are not longer inFlorida. And from the bicycle you remove the handlebar and discard the rest of the bike.Finally, you take off the rubber threads from the toy tractor or tanks. This leaves only thefollowing separate pieces: skis, outboard motor, handlebars and rubber threads’. However,Boyd challenges his audience, what emerges when you pull all this together 40 ?:SNOWMOBILESo Boyd moves from Polanyi to snowmobiles. The message is obvious and a restatement ofthe one he also advanced in Organic Design: ‘To discern what is going on we must interact in avariety of ways with our environment. We must be able to examine the world from a numberof perspectives so that we can generate mental images or impressions that correspond to thatworld’. This serves as the introduction to the general survey, for Boyd ‘will use this schemeof pulling things apart (analysis) and putting them back together (synthesis) in newcombinations to find how apparently unrelated ideas and actions can be related to oneanother’ 41 . And indeed, he does.37 The “approach” Boyd takes in this presentation and described here is on p. 4.38 Ibid, p.3.39 Ibid, p.6.40 Ibid, pp.7-9.41 Ibid, p.10.245