Perhaps metaphors work through a symbolic representation – if I say ‘tree’, you have an image of a tree in your mind, if I say tree roots this is more difficult as we do not typically see the root system within the Earth.…

If we consider the frameworks that we have in our strategy toolkit they are valuable but how do we use them? We get the outline of a framework e.g. Porter’s Five Forces and we fill in the boxes with data and call it analysis. By analogy, it can feel like those books which are popular at the moment: adult colouring-in books. Are we just following the lines drawn for us by the framework - it can appear to be analysis but does it actually reflect reality, if the ‘picture’ is already drawn for us?…