The Art of Quantum Planning

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CHAPTER 1 Learning-Oriented Planning

“We understand that the only competitive advantage the company of the future will have is its managers’ ability to learn faster than their competitors.” from Arie P. de Geus, “Planning as Learning”Harvard Business Review, March–April 1988

AS I WRITE THIS BOOK (the end of 2008 and early months of 2009), the world economy is going through economic turmoil that is being compared to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic stress is the result of a host of factors, including bad lending practices in mortgage markets, the creation of complex and hard-to-value financial instruments (known as derivatives), plain old fraud (the Bernard Madoff investment scandal), and, from my point of view, poor strategic ...