The field of Strategic Management has a history of convening Strategy Summits.
The first such Summit was held in May of 1977 at the University of Pittsburgh and gathered scholars from business policy and related academic traditions to discuss the future of this kind of research and teaching in business schools. This Summit, in many ways, led to the creation of the field we know today as Strategic Management. It was also instrumental in the founding of the Strategic Management Society, and the Strategic Management Journal.
The second Summit was held in November of 1990 in Napa, California, and gathered both strategic management scholars and scholars from other academic business school disciplines. Its purpose was to define the central research questions in the field of Strategic Management, and to clarify the role of Strategic Management in business school research and teaching. This summit led to the publication of an influential book that defined four fundamental research questions in Strategic Management (Richard Rumelt, Dan Schendel, and David Teece (1994) Fundamental Issues in Strategy: A Research Agenda. Boston: Harvard Business School Press). It also helped reinforce the link between Strategic Management and economics that had been first forged by Michael Porter and other scholars in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
This second Strategy Summit took place 34 years ago. The field of Strategic Management has evolved dramatically since then. It seemed like it might be a good time to reflect on how the field has changed over these more than three decades, and to consider how it should evolve going forward. It was, in short, time to convene another Strategy Summit.
The two of us—Jay Barney and Todd Zenger, both professors at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah—decided to convene this Summit from August 5 to 8, 2024.
Todd Zenger
Presidential Professor of Strategy and Strategic Leadership & N. Eldon Tanner Chair
David Eccles School of Business
University of Utah
Jay Barney
Presidential Professor of Strategic Management & Lassonde Chair of Social Entrepreneurship
David Eccles School of Business
University of Utah
