Michael Lissack
This chapter explores how landscape images can serve as an interface between our minds and the complex business ecosystems we inhabit. We’ll examine why landscapes prove so effective as mental tools, how to employ specific landscape metaphors for business challenges, and how organizations can use these images to create coherence across diverse stakeholders. In a world where traditional strategic frameworks quickly become obsolete, landscape thinking offers a more adaptive, intuitive approach to navigating complexity. The hills, valleys, rivers, and paths we envision ar- en’t just poetic figures of speech—they’re powerful cognitive tools that al- low us to grasp patterns and possibilities that abstract analysis might miss. Why Landscapes? The human brain evolved primarily to solve spatial problems. Our ancestors’ survival depended on their ability to navigate physical envi- ronments, find food, avoid predators, and locate shelter. This evolutionary history has bequeathed us remarkably sophisticated neural machinery for processing spatial information. When we employ landscape metaphors for business challenges, we tap into this evolutionary heritage, recruiting powerful cognitive resources that remain underleveraged in traditional business thinking. Several spe- cific advantages make landscape imagery particularly valuable: Pattern Recognition Our visual and spatial processing systems excel at recognizing pat- terns across seemingly disparate elements. When we visualize a business challenge as a landscape, we can more readily perceive relationships, de- pendencies, and emerging structures. Consider how one executive describes her company’s competitive environment:
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