About the Framework

Title: Strategy Safari – Seeing Strategy Through Ten Lenses Authors: Henry Mintzberg, Bruce Ahlstrand og Joseph Lampel Second Edition: 2009

In the second edition of Strategy Safari, Mintzberg and his co-authors update their classic “guided tour” through the ten schools of strategy formation with fresher examples and clearer distinctions between them. The book’s core idea remains: strategy isn’t one thing - it’s a mix of perspectives shaped by people, context, and time. The updated version puts more emphasis on how these schools interact in real organizations, showing that healthy strategy work blends deliberate planning with emergent learning.

Key Elements

The Ten Schools of Strategy Formation:

1. Design School – Matching internal strengths to external opportunities.

2. Planning School – Building formal processes and forecasts.

3. Positioning School – Choosing where and how to compete.

4. Entrepreneurial School – Strategy driven by vision and leadership.

5. Cognitive School – How thinking patterns shape strategic perception.

6. Learning School – Strategy as an evolving, adaptive process.

7. Power School – Strategy as negotiation and influence.

8. Cultural School – Strategy emerging from shared beliefs and norms.

9. Environmental School – Strategy shaped by external forces.

10. Configuration School – How organizations shift between stable and transformative phases.

Why We Like It at BlueJam

• It makes strategy human - built from habits of thinking, not just analysis.

• It helps teams understand why they see strategy differently, not just what they see.

• It normalizes the messiness of real-world strategy, making it easier to act with intent even when things evolve.

Where It Can Fall Short

• It describes perspectives more than it prescribes methods —- great for understanding, less for direct application.

• The “ten schools” can feel abstract without guided reflection or examples tied to your own strategy.

• It doesn’t address the tools and data modern strategy work now relies on.

BlueJam’s Take

The platform turns Mintzberg’s second-edition insight - that strategy is plural and evolving - into practice. Teams can map which “schools” they naturally operate from and explore how to balance them. Structured prompts turn reflection into action, while shared dashboards make emergent learning visible. Strategy becomes less about locking in a plan and more about building shared awareness and adaptive progress.