Today´s episode is written under the cap of a unique inconspicuous mandate. My profuse imagination unravels me to play the role of a state-of-the-art corporate strategist in my own industry, the strategic management field. Particularly playing the role as if I was hired to review and provide my notes and humble interpretations on how I perceive: the “what” (content), the “how” (methodology and expertise), and the “who” (the strategy faculty professors professions) of “corporate strategy” in every prestigious business school. The research agenda that I will introduce today will be exhibited in a bold and “state-of-the-art” assertion, that is subject to be reviewed by my older strategy peers´ experts who have been following and are estimating my current work.  In concordance, let´s begin.

Who is writing this research agenda?
A state-of-the-art corporate strategist. This is what Eleonora Escalante Strategy is at the core of her professional endeavors. I adore writing about it, and I also worship painting watercolors.  A “state-of-the-art” individual, is somebody positioned on the freshest podium of the development of a product, a service, a project, or an experienced professional, who is incorporating the newest knowledge, expertise, tools, ideas, and features into it. Mistakenly we are called the cutting-edge innovators that apply information technology. Wrong. Erroneously we are usually situated with the flashy brand-new technologies. But that judgment is incorrect. We must go beyond that. Our critical thinking can´t make us accept “new tech” as an answer to our call in life. To make our toil more complicated, we also must embrace that we are the discoverers and guardians of the real past of strategic management for the next generations.  To be a “state-of-the-art” professional implies that we must have the guts to go back in time to the past, to review it, and to understand comprehensively the genuine causes of what we do today. This going to the past journey doesn´t end. Every generation of “state-of-the-art” strategists will discover something pristine in the past that is required to know in our present, for the sake of designing a better future for our humanity.

The truthful mandate of state-of-the-art strategists.
In the area of corporate strategy, we are obliged to dig so profoundly, comprehending that even if we do it all, there is still going to be something to continue unearthing. A “state-of-the-art” person is never going to settle in the quest to find the truth. And as human nature walks by, evolving every day, we expect, hopefully, that in the forthcoming, we can hand out the baton to another “state-of-the-art” person, who will excavate more in-depth than us to complement, and update our discoveries. All our theoretical models, frameworks of analysis, recipes of success, business modeling, strategic plans, and tools that include our most recent technological gears are simply a tiny slim narrow area to explain to business owners how to trigger their prosperity. But this is just a minuscule piece of our mandate.

Corporate Strategy wake-up call.
Our goal as advisors should be beyond helping to generate wealth and prosperity for business owners, employees, and stakeholders. It should also include to aid them to think properly for the decision-making of the next generations. At that moment, we become the teachers for the future.
During the last 75 years (after WWII), most of the corporate strategists, even the top gurus that we all know, have forgotten the truthful core business of our history, our integral role as “state-of-the-art” professionals; and we have swapped it with mediocrity for a “show me the money” mandate. Instead of dedicating our time to finding the truth of our love for God, for others, and for ourselves in our businesses; corporate strategists have mounted the ambitious dogma of finding and motivating business owners to utilize “any kind of new blinking tech” without any regulation involved, rushing them to invest and compete against the wave of the rest of tech innovators, who usually travel back and forth to China for the supply of their new “inventions”. The Deity of corporate strategists’ purpose has been lost a long time ago, probably since the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the Fugger family controlled the gold, silver, and copper mines in Hungary, Tyrol, and the Erzgebirge in Europe (1).  At that time the tool for value creation was centered in the industry of mining, to pay for luxury goods from the Levant region, high textiles from Asia, the spices brought by the Portuguese from the Far East, and to purchase the newest sources of gold from Spanish America.

Money supply from mining noble metals (mainly silver) was the tool, the medium, and the core business that moved the financing know-how in its main phases between 1500 and 1900: What started with the Italians (particularly the Florentines in Bruges), then shifted to the South German merchant bankers (Fuggers, Welsers and Hochstetters), involving the Genoese (Grimaldi, Centuroni, Espinosa and others); and then the Dutch and British played their part in every single main cycle of systemic capital accumulation in the past.

The history of business and its money transactions are the origin of everything as we do it today. The purpose of money during the Enlightenment answered to the context and the purpose of business of its time. Today, the purpose of money is to make it available and include it in Smartphones or computers. Since the advent of the Smartphone, for more than a decade, virtual money and digital wallets harbor the proof of evidence that we are moving into a new kind of money supply that is far from the lessons learned throughout history. This non-regulated private source money supply is the last frontier that is guiding “how much we have advanced” to tie our newest digital products and services to a new Digital/virtual “je ne sais quoi” imbalanced economy. Abruptly, corporate strategists have missed their role of the highest dignity and have been lagging behind, converting themselves as the followers of the newest digital-tech inventors, and are now validating every single “digital innovation”, with the incorrect premises of our strategic management frameworks. On top of that, business schools that teach strategic management have fallen into the trap of forgetting that the purpose of a company is people, and the improvement of the quality of life of the employees and everyone around the value chain. It is a process from the inside out. Ignorantly all the world has adopted the merchant commercial purpose for NAIQIs _{(Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence (including robotics and automation), Quantum computing, and the Internet).} The NAIQIs are seen as the new fountain of success, as a new source of wealth, as if Artificial Intelligence will become and is the roadmap technology for all to pursue, as the core of our existence. Sadly, it is not. Here is why.

Anything that humans do without love is magical rubbish.
To ignite the goodness for loving God and loving others, inside the philosophy of strategic management should be one of the most relevant commandments of our history. Probably you feel it is an unrealistic ideal. And most of the strategists around my age would think I am out of mind. But if you ask all the older gurus that are almost close to 80 years old, I am convinced, that no matter their country of origin, they all immediately know already what I am talking about.

Anything that humans do without love is magical rubbish. That includes our business endeavors that only pursue profits in the intent. Every single strategic management framework that we utilize doesn´t even consider love as a little side dish either. To include love inside our strategic management frames of reference will require a long process. To do this is more important than any of the old warfare violent frameworks that we have been using since World War II. Every single framework that I have taught you since 2016, articulates the competitive war of our ancestors. History has registered these frames of reference since we have historical registered records available. Consequently, we are doing the same old thing with a touch of “industrial” justification, using the scaffolds of our fierce competition for sources of wealth.  Once corporate strategists became the chasers of the next technology that could be used for the accumulation of riches and capital, the role of “state-of-the-art” began to disappear.  Our role as philosophers of strategic management also began to fade away.  Our current corporate strategists located in business administration faculties, strategic advisors, and consulting houses team members, have forgotten that our role is not to stalk the next technological invention to procure wealth creation disregarding the ultimate purpose of our existence: that is to help and love others in the intent of learning how to love ourselves. The current corporate strategists that are moving the world forgot that history, and the philosophy of management have been tangled to so many mistakes, and they are advising to pave more slipups in the future. Furthermore, to build prosperity for business owners without considering the lessons of the past is simply an eternal corridor that leaves multiple doors open to repeat old mistakes. Now in a virtual interconnected world, these old mistakes go viral as a contagion that can´t be tamed. The context of today is abysmally different than ever, but we still use the same models that were displayed when the concept of the industry began, during the Enlightenment period. Successful frameworks were applied, but all of them forgot how to love people at the core.  The business models of the mining industry are there to remind us of that. The business models of sugar, cotton, tobacco, and diamonds have been documented to remind us of that.  The transatlantic slave trade model with more than 12.5 million African slaves is there to remind us of that. And now China with its dumping low-cost model is also there to remind us of that.

Corporate Strategy as it is being taught is pulling us back to the past of feudalism.
Our narrow corporate strategy of today has been slimmed to mediocre recipes of geographic horizontal growth, mergers and acquisitions, vertical integration, competitive advantage analysis, and synergies. This narrowness is an example of what we see in China. China is the product of thousands of Chinese professionals who have been studying at the top of the Western world business schools. China is founded on the global strategy theoretical charters that came to life through the MNCs after WWII. But those frameworks are coming from the Enlightenment period. China has simply adopted the corporate strategy of capitalist rules of the game in their global trade and commerce. As much as China is in trouble, we all are in a difficult situation too.

In addition, to continue operating with corporate strategy frameworks that need to be changed is blindness. Corporate strategists are simply repeating the same philosophy of neo-mercantilism when they opt to advise for the low-cost strategy at the expense of sacrificing the employees’ natural process to rise from poverty to the middle class. Additionally, corporate strategists have chosen and supported each new technology without requesting regulation in advance. That is wrong, every single democracy requires some degree of regulation, otherwise it is a disaster. Contemporary Corporate Strategy has been focusing on the matters of the new, disregarding the lessons of the civilization’s past mistakes, and ignoring to protect the good old things of our past too. Contemporary corporate strategy is cheating itself and all our brains as if the blinking cheapest “newest” is what matters the most; forgetting that there are segments of traditional brain-powered activities that are enormously valuable. By supporting every single newest tech invention coming out of Silicon Valley or other tech innovators communities, corporate strategists not only continued neglecting the priorities of problem-solving in the world, but little by little, they sustained a new philosophical premise:  our state of mind is privileging the instruments of technological inventions, the utensils, or the apparatuses  (that are not usually good for humans); instead of the essence of what humans can do.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the core of corporate strategists?.
AI is a tool. AI is technology. It is both. It is a technological tool.  But it is confused as the center of our next frontier in business. Probably if the Internet weren´t ubiquitous, AI wouldn´t be so endangering and sinister. The fact that almost everyone who is economically active in the world has access to the Internet is making AI a dangerous technological tool. According to Statista, as of October 2023, there were 5.3 billion Internet users worldwide, which amounted to 65.7 percent of the global population. Of this total, 4.95 billion, or 61.4 percent of the world’s population, were social media users. Despite AI is opening certain types of jobs, it is also hurting our brains psychologically and physiologically forever. In addition, it hurts our health to be in front of the computer 8 hours a day. It really hurts your muscles, your posture, your inner organs, your cardiovascular system, and your eyes. It hurts to be seated all day.  Humans are giving up their freedom to move, and without knowing, humans are swapping it for a fake comfort that is damaging their neural system by staying so long in front of screens that are packed with AI software that makes everything for them. There are more risks and perils than benefits in our quest for implanting AI in all activities that we did physically before without the help of a computer. Where is the equilibrium?

AI is an example of how far we have gone when we are innovating. AI should be regulated in every single industry. And the first industry to be regulated should be Information Technology and the NAICS 518 group. Of course, there would be someone saying, “AI and the digital jobs couldn´t be so bad?” Particularly if there is a demand to use it for the “Internet-powered” applications and marketing. But please dear readers, AI is simply a side-dish technology that may help to reduce a minority of specific time-consuming data analytical processes, creative drawings, or marketing advertising campaigns, including our different research activities and communications. But by choosing for it, we are swapping the old for the new, leaving people without jobs. And again the same premise of searching for efficiency, productivity, and low cost of the transatlantic slave trade returns. Artificial Intelligence is the medium for which humans are cannibalizing their talents to each other, and spreading them out in such a way that there is no special treasured differentiation for which we can become middle-class citizens. Once our talents stop being unique because the Internet and Social Media are our massive showcase, then the prices of our products and services go down the drain or are stolen by “the opportunistic digital robbers” leaving us without anything but converting us into digital beggars.

AI was supposed to help us with certain things, not to replace us, and never to hurt us.
Probably AI promises to be a better choice compared to the African slaves who were utilized to work in the plantations of the Enlightenment period. Apparently, the far-sightedness of using AI has a rationale aspect that is ignited with the same premise of the transatlantic slave trade: a quest for efficiency, and productivity, undercovering the idea that opening new jobs for the youth creates a market for prosperity. But who in our existing generations has tested this lifestyle yet? Not yet. We are testing in real life, without pilot projects, without regulators checking. There is too much danger on our civilization plates.
To what extent can we use machines and algorithms to do our jobs? Who has the correct answer? Not even MIT. A NAIQI new era has been implemented under the umbrella of a free market and no one seems to apply the law of prudence and carefulness.  To this day no expert has dared to say the truth and at least try to filter what activities should remain essentially resting in humans no matter what degree of sophistication of technologies.
AI is a utensil, like a fork and a spoon. AI shouldn´t be designed to substitute human being´s thinking hardest capabilities. AI without regulation is taking us back to feudalism. It is a product without a philosophy of love for people at the darkest limit. AI as it has been designed, is not leading us to love others as ourselves.

Research Agenda for Business Schools

1. We need to acknowledge what we are doing by teaching corporate strategy as it is patterned in all business schools worldwide. Without this awareness, we will continue teaching without a purpose. To change from a warfare strategy to a loving cooperation corporate strategy that abounds in love for other human beings within our philosophical premises, will be hard. It will be hard even to start to do the correct research to include the philosophical mindset of cooperation. This should be the driver, the force for good that is missing. If we only focus on profits and the “show me the money” motto, we are disgracing our students who are required to change the role of decision-making at the top (boardroom). Business schools are guiding (unconsciously) to continue doing much damage to humanity without knowing or noticing it.
2. When Business Schools validate the decision-making analysis by providing courses as we all know them, then anyone who attends those courses strongly believes that is the path-certified way to do it. The lessons from each course are implemented outside the University, either directly or by using consulting houses. Without a doubt year after year, we continue using the same books, the same authors, the same lessons. If a business school course teaches it, the content of the professor becomes the norm. If consulting companies of great reputation utilize them (probably with certain modifications given their experience), then it is not by chance or luck that we all are group thinkers of what business schools teach.
3. Literature review: During this semester I have reviewed at least 50 books on corporate strategy and/or strategic management. All these books are used at Universities of prestige. The level of the books could be basic, utilized for a course, or a couple of them during an undergraduate degree in business and economics. Other textbooks belong to the level of a master’s degree as an MBA, Master of Management, or Finance.  And then we got the practitioners´ books and academic papers that belong to the level of Ph.D. or postdoctoral scholars. The occasion to review these oeuvres only shows how far we are from helping to change from competition to ethical collaboration. If the philosophical pursuit of strategic management is still in the hands of the times of Sun Tzu, and if our textbooks show fierce warfare competition as the core principle for success, then we are philosophically wrong in everything that we are teaching.  
4. The Enlightenment is the period of history in which the monarchies of Europe or the super-power European empires “ironically” shifted from feudalism to pseudo-feudalism with a mask of incipient capitalism. Most of the Enlightenment thinkers (in any of the canons we have studied) wished to establish a change of mentality and procure a change of society. They wished to dismiss the status quo and the holy participation of the Catholic Church next to the top decision-makers of monarchical absolutism empires, to find freedom to pursue the merchant economic activities that they saw operating in the Dutch Golden Age, in the Habsburg Netherlands. The cradle of the private sector players is in the Enlightenment period. The change of mind that Enlightenment thinkers fought for was crucial to establishing a system of merchants and banking that let them operate without limits.
5. The Enlightenment (and a couple of centuries before, during the Renaissance period) is the minimum foundation that should be studied as a core course of the history of management in any business school. The reason why the High Enlightenment (I include here the period that starts in the 17th century and ends with the French Revolution) should be studied with careful attention at business schools: This course of the history of business is as essential as accounting or marketing. And it is a core historical course before the rest of the critical courses of strategic management.
6. It is uncomfortable, for many of us who did not get an undergraduate history degree, it is painful to realize that we went to graduate school to study business, and we never got one single course in business history or historical development of business, not even as an optative possibility. And this has occurred since the beginning of business administration as a university choice. This occurred at Harvard, MIT, Columbia, NYU, Stanford, and many other universities of prestige. Once we begin to study the origins of the most critical monetary and business industry motions, and we can situate ourselves in the society of Europe (and Asia) as of the beginning of feudalism, then our mental scope to understand business as we do it today, is completely transformed. It is as if we instill a huge enlightenment in front of our eyes.
7. To change the content and the approach to strategic management implies adjusting the rest of the columns of our home of business administration. The challenge is not going to be easy, and it will take a while, probably a generation (25 years) just to design what to do. It is not possible that we are joining the 21st-century challenges of our civilization, with theoretical frameworks of strategic management that are similar to how the empires of the 17th and 18th centuries got rich.  Our tangled status with the model of China only demonstrates how far have we gone through, and the wingspan of the challenge is far beyond our imagination.
8. The Enlightenment as we studied it here, in our first and second seasons, represents a little summary of what really happened with merchants, empires, money, and financing. The radical shock of the French Revolution didn´t change the pseudo-feudalism that is revolting in every single aspect of the digital-network-virtual “je ne sais quoi economy”.
9. A transformation of the strategic management field will require that all the still-living gurus and professors of strategy recognize the situation and decide to change. This challenge is not a social revolution, it will be a change coming from the universities, and validated by the outside business owners of all industries and fields. Transforming the premises of low cost will require a philosophical transformation. Changing how we see the environment in our business models will require a philosophical transformation. Modifying the way we have put the “maximization of shareholder value”, will also touch our gurus in economics. And will also require a change in stock exchanges and banking. It will be an inside-out transformation in which we will place the well-being and human improvement of our employees as middle-class citizens (earning between US$28,800 to US$175,000 a year) objective as the generator of businesses. The transformation of the roots of our business theories will take a while. It is naïve to think these changes will be accepted by all industries and business sectors as the truth. It will be hard. But first, all the professors of strategy should be conscious enough that if we continue teaching and doing business as usual, with the digital “je ne sais quoi” era on our shoulders we are only disgracing the future.  
10. Tears of fear. Because humans tend to silence the forces for good, it is important to raise and protect the professors who will initiate the evangelization of this change. None of my message is communism. And I am not an anti-system with a far-right allure either. To avoid the sacrifice and painful ideological attacks on the first professors teaching what I have discovered during this year, a true commitment from the Business School sponsors is truly required.
11. Any new digital economic model that ignites internet begging as the “core” of their value proposition, business modeling, and corporate strategy, is wrong. To offer begging as a “modus vivendi” for survival is enough reason to be against it.
12. The Enlightenment has not ended yet. And it is true not just for those who belong to the groups that were leading it 250 years ago. A true enlightenment without God is useless. Only by putting God, and love at the center of our business endeavors, goodness will triumph over madness.  It will be a long process. That is for sure.

Summary and Conclusions.
The summary and conclusions of our hard work during this year are included in the next slides. Please read them thoughtfully, the slides of this episode are the most important material I could have ever produced for you. These slides are my most cherished treasure. It took me more than a year to arrive at these conclusions. Feel free to print, share, and download them as you wish.

We are done with the saga “From the Enlightenment to Business Models” Season III.
We just want to express our biggest thanks for reading to us. Our thankful appreciation for understanding why we couldn´t finish at the same time as the Ocean Race 2023 some months ago. We adore their support and kindness. Without them, I wouldn´t be writing here today. I found the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-2018, and their sailing experience helped me to come back. All the sailors renewed my spirit at that time. And here we are, 6 years later, still producing and writing for all of you. Again thank you to all our readers. Congratulations. We did it!. 

There is a new saga coming: “Value Propositions: Theory and Cases”. I hope to see you on the 22nd of January, 2024. As always, expect the unexpected.

Musical Section
Our last video is a celebration given by Tchaikovsky with “The Nutcracker”, a marvelous gift for Christmas. The video has been uploaded by the YouTube channel Brilliant Classics. We also have added as a bonus, the full performance of the oeuvre by the New York City Ballet. For more information: https://www.nycballet.com/discover/ballet-repertory/george-balanchines-the-nutcracker/. The choreography is from George Ballantine. “George Balanchine’s choreography is one of the most complex theatrical and famous” since 1954.

With this piece, we close our work of 2023, not before wishing you happy holidays and a fantastic 2024.

Thank you for reading http://www.eleonoraescalantestrategy.com. See you next year.

Sources of reference that were utilized today. Look at slide 28. In this text:
(1). https://ies.princeton.edu/pdf/E208.pdf

Disclaimer: Eleonora Escalante paints Illustrations in Watercolor. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY.  All are used as Illustrative and non-commercial images. Utilized only informatively for the public good. Nevertheless, most of this blog’s pictures, images, or videos are not mine. I do not own any of the lovely photos or images unless otherwise stated.