Sameh El namaki

• Ph d, university of brussels 1976
• Dean at VU School of Management

This stage explores the tenants of organic neurons and their plasticity. It before proceeds with an study of artificial neurons and the potential for pretended neural plasticity. Artificial affecting animate nerve organs plasticity is before placed within the circumstances of strategic thinking. A conceptual foundation is then tried. Neural plastic...

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior. Artificial Intelligence (AI) constitutes an amorphous phenomenon. There are many different conceptions, subconcepts, and hypotheses offered. Technologies are praised, but the final results remain unclear. It appears to be an industry in...

Mind wandering is a daily event. Research reveals that 96% of American adults state that they experience mind wandering on a daily basis (Singer & McCraven, 1961), and it occupies up to 50% of the waking day (Kane et al.

Few industries are as volatile as the chip industry. The rather short history of the industry has witnessed all types of dramatic cyclical swings and disruptions, from the technological to the geo-political. Technology drove the industry from the simple “few transistors on a silicon wafer” state to the multi-million transistors on the same silicon...

Earlier chapters dealt with the implications of emerging technologies to top management competencies and performance. The following chapters will deal with the implications of those technologies to the organization as a whole. Those implications will include data-driven decision making, cognitive computing, and implicit innovation.Each of those iss...

Strategic thinking has roots in strategic intent. Research revealed this relationship some time ago (Prahalad, Vikalpa, 30(2), 1–10, 2005). Yet, strategic intent is an opaque concept with roots in psychology, neurology, and, of course, management. Strategic intent is also a medium for accounting for purpose and continuity of goals within an organiz...

Strategic thinking roots lie in military sciences. Business took over the concept and tried to adapt it to a less hostile and sharp-edged context. The results were models for strategic thinking that operated with different tools and different ultimate goals. Focus did, however, blur, and the concept seemed in need of a revamping.Meanwhile disruptiv...

Plasticity is the change force within the human brain. It is the biological, chemical, and physical capacity of the brain to reorganize its structure and function. It induces shifts in functions and function instrument allocation. It is vital for the process of accommodating brain environmental change as well as brain trauma accommodation. It is al...

Cognitive computing is an AI-derived paradigm that focuses on human-like reasoning and understanding done by computing equipment driven by software. AI-rooted cognitive competencies deliver these outcomes through software-managed computing equipment. It is an attempt at delivering outcomes that could compare to the human brain’s cognitive outcomes,...

Most contemporary concepts of leadership entertain the premise that a leader is an individual who is able to convince others to follow him toward an identified goal. It is a process whereby an individual induces “followers” to work toward an individual or a group end result. Creating conviction and fellowship could be explained in terms of many the...

Human intelligence is a source of many a competency. Through intelligence, humans possess the cognitive abilities to learn, to form concepts, to understand issues, and to apply logic and reason and also the ability to recognize patterns, to plan, to innovate, to solve problems, to make decisions, to retain information, and to use language to commun...

Cognitive predictions are brain-configured cognitive future event projections. They are derived from the cognitive functions of the brain. Those functions allow individuals to receive, select, store, transform, develop, and recover information induced by external stimuli. They also allow individuals to understand and to relate to the task and globa...

Strategic control means different things to different people. Some definitions resort to the popular and others seek safety into the familiar. Some place the issue within the management control framework (Anthony, Management Control System. McGraw-Hill School Education Group, ISBN. 0256131554, 9780256131550, 1994). Others position it within a “bala...

Artificial intelligence is inducing massive change in an area that is seldom addressed in current AI contexts: Entrepreneurship and enterprise. AI is changing the texture of entrepreneurial opportunities, the demands of the entrepreneurial function, the premises of entrepreneurial thinking, and the patterns of entrepreneurial strategic thinking.Thi...

Analysis provided in earlier chapters reveals critical elements of the new strategic management paradigm. It is, however, predominantly conceptual. How will this conceptual framework translate into applications within the emerging technology-laced business environment of today and tomorrow? Application that will require specific operational tools e...

Several emerging technologies will shape the strategic behavior of tomorrow. Prime among those is artificial intelligence (AI) and data sciences.The artificial intelligence concept is complex. Scope and content could vary according to the context and the ultimate goal of the discussion. Definitions, therefore, could spell out a variety of elements...

Emerging technologies led by AI and data sciences induce a strategic thinking paradigm that creates demands on top management and the organization as a whole. This chapter deals with demands on top management. Novel top management competencies and traits will underline the new concept. Those could spread along a wide front but include in the first...

A vision could provide the core for strategic thinking. It goes beyond the touchable and the familiar. It pierces through the future and projects currents and elements that could go beyond today’s familiar. It is essential for a sense of direction and the sense of compatibility with unforeseen disruptions. Yet visions are not easy to come by. They...

There are several cognitive competencies of the human brain that could constitute an enigma. Thinking is one of those. Thinking seems to be the most complex and most demanding of cognitive competencies. It is a system with inputs, transformation processes, and ultimately, an output. Inputs are drawn from different strata of the brain. Transformatio...

The human brain learns. And it does that in many ways. Cognition, sensing, and memory play a key role in the process. Human memory could, as we stated earlier, be either long-term or short-term, with the long-term memory having an implicit or explicit dimension. The former one is associated with unconscious memory, also known as automatic memory. I...

Emerging technologies, whether artificial intelligence or data sciences related, will have an impact on behavior, whether at individual or organizational levels. It will, at the individual level, impact upon individual culture, individual strategic attitudes, individual communication patterns, individual perceptions, and individual approaches to co...

Emerging technologies led by artificial intelligence (AI) and data sciences have driven strategic management and strategic thinking into uncharted waters. This has resulted in serious disruptions especially in the contents and approaches to strategic thinking. Many of the early, and for many years, familiar concepts have run out of steam. They fail...

Today’s business environment is witnessing substantial disruptions. Tomorrow will bring about a lot more. Actually tomorrow’s shifts will be as dramatic as to trigger fundamental disruptions in all dimensions of business from the concept to the players and the outcomes. Those shifts or disruptions will go all the way from technology and economics t...

It is the contention of the author that classic managerial functions starting with planning and proceeding to staffing, directing, and controlling have, as a result of the dynamics analyzed above, lost ground. Forces of change in the corporation, the managers, the technology, and the environment as a whole have induced grass root change. This chang...

A multiple of characteristics have been attributed to top management in traditional management literature. Leadership, initiative, and sense of direction are among them. Artificial intelligence has introduced a novel characteristic: awareness. Top management has to demonstrate all common characteristics but before all self-awareness. Awareness, an...

The world of data has changed dramatically over the past decade. Massive volumes are being generated and data processes from storage and extraction to loading and transformation are assuming new dimensions. Data is revolutionizing the way companies view themselves, their industry, and their future. And data analysis has become a premise to business...

Synthetic data is omni present. It is system produced and man-made. Their prevalence is induced by data gaps, data model analytics, system users and system abusers. They contribute, according to some estimates, a near 30% of applied data in AI analytical models today. This may grow by 2030, to a near 80% according to some sources. A development tha...

Published by American Journals Publishing Center, USA (Website: https://www.american-journals.com/americanjournals). There was a time when BCG’s Growth Share Matrix broke all records of strategic management instrument popularity. Populist labels became industry standards. There were Stars, Cash Cows, and Question Marks and not to forget Dogs. All c...

p>Powerful forces of disruption are penetrating the core concepts of strategic thinking and the strategy education industry. Traditional strategic thinking literature and instruction material rest on a solid base of concepts developed by authors from Ansoff and Drucker to Porter, Mintzberg and Prahalad. Their concepts lasted for decades and their...

Traditional strategic thinking literature and instruction material rest on a solid base of concepts developed by authors from Ansoff and Drucker to Porter , Mintzberg and Prahalad. Their concepts lasted for decades and their literature is a standard feature of business school strategy teachings until this very day. Disruptive forces are changing th...

Published by American Journals Publishing Center, USA (Website: https://www.american-journals.com/americanjournals). Powerful forces of disruption are penetrating the core concepts of strategic thinking and the strategy education industry. Traditional strategic thinking literature and instruction material rest on a solid base of concepts developed...

The implications of artificial intelligence to strategic thinking. Artificial intelligence systems and their impact on the premises of strategic thinking .

p>Disruption induces disequilibrium. Today’s global economy is the case in point. Powerful sources of disruption are undermining classic premises of global economic equilibrium and, in the process, changing the contours of the world economy. Long cherished globalization premises of free market, open economy, small government, private initiative, an...

This book is a compilation of contributed works on management of data in the age of artificial intelligence. The AI technologies have changed the way the businesses do manage themselves in modern times. It becomes much more important to manage the data a business owns when the same can be collated and used by the allied AI technologies for forming...

Artificial intelligence technologies will very likely induce a fundamental shift in strategic thinking. And science fiction will provide a medium. Science fiction will change the scope, boundaries and contents of "Big Data" and consequent deep learning will introduce novel foundations for tomorrow's functions and products. It will provide the creat...

This paper draws the parallel between the processes of learning in the human brain with strategic thinking in business organisations. It also suggests implicit learning as a possible element within the cognitive functions of artificial intelligence. Five case examples are provided to illustrate innovative strategic thinking with the use of Big Data...

Could cognitive computing, an AI derived paradigm that focuses on reasoning and understanding at a quasi abstract level, enhance the cognitive processes inherent in human strategic thinking?. Cognition is an output of processes within the human brain. It delivers creativity and innovation. Cognitive computing delivers concepts, insights and innovat...

To an entrant, Artificial Intelligence (AI) constitutes an amorphous phenomenon. Ways and means of containing this concept within a systems framework is the focus of this article. The article resorts to qualitative analysis as a medium. It advances a systems theory framework as the boundary for an AI structure where all things would fall in place....

p>The probability is high that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will provide the answer to future product and market innovations. It has the ability to induce a fundamental change in products, markets, models, and paradigms. Manufacturing and a wide spectrum of services are undergoing a near-revolutionary change driven by AI delivered innovations. Comp...

Computing equipment capable of what one may term partial and quasi-intelligent behaviour, commonly referred to as Artificial Intelligence (AI), is assuming a key role in business. The probability is high that this Artificial Intelligence (AI) will lead to a fundamental change in the process of business strategy formulation as much as the very conte...

Abstract Vision is a depiction of a future state an organization, a corporate culture, a technology or an activity may aspire to realise, and the relative position of the organization within that time-space continuum. It is a conceptualisation of a new and desirable future reality that can induce achievement and motivate followers. It is the busine...

This paper draws the parallel between the processes of learning in the human brain with strategic thinking in business organizations. It also suggests implicit learning as a possible element within the cognitive functions of artificial intelligence. Five case examples are provided to illustrate innovative strategic thinking with the use of Big Data...

p>Presidents Trump and Xi are approaching a game theory Nash construct. Both, predecessors included, have colluded into creating a race towards dominance of global trade, finance and technology. China by, primarily, enhancing the consumption share of US GDP and America by feeding Chinese insatiable hunger for technology. They created a dangerous me...

Management as a science is the prerogative of North America. Authors, concepts, publishers, journals, institutions, individuals and events are either bona fide North American or tinted with a strong North American tint. The few brave non North American souls who have ventured into this domain whether from Britain, Germany or Japan, were quickly re-...

Disruption induces disequilibrium. Today’s global economy is the case in point. Powerful sources of disruption are undermining classic premises of global economic equilibrium and, in the process, changing the contours of the World economy. Long cherished globalization premises of free market, open economy, small government, private initiative and d...

Globalization, or the worldwide movement towards a high measure of economic, financial, trade, technology and communications integration, is a concept in need of an overhaul. The roots which have rested largely on President Reagan’s economic policy foundations of the early 80’s are wearing off. Free market, deregulation, income and wealth tax cut,...

p>China’s Bridge and Road Initiative or BRI is emerging as the new bulwark of a newly reconfigured World economy. The initiative is presented as the conceptual and operational framework for the restructuring of the global economy. Foundations are designed to be all inclusive. There is capital, trade, technology and human resource elements. There ar...

The prominence driven home by Porter’s gospel or the argument that the ultimate purpose of strategic thinking is achieving long term sustainable competitive advantage within a well-defined industry (Porter 1979), is being challenged and refuted. Competitive advantage is transient, not sustainable (McGrath, 2013). Deeply ingrained structures and sys...

p> There are two ways to conduct economic, and possibly political, business between countries. The first is conventional search for country present day competitive advantage (Porter, 1990). Yet competitive advantage is transient, not sustainable (Forbes, 2.6.2013). And competitive advantage could relate to yesterday’s industries not today’s arenas....

Accreditation of business programs and institutions is a powerful industry in the United States and Europe. The industry has massive followers and holds sway over the fate of many an institution. World wide data are not easily accessible but some figures are indicative of the scale and scope of the industry. It is estimated that there are over 4,00...

Common vision of warfare is strewn with troop movements, destructive technologies, ruined infrastructure and, naturally, physical violence. What is missing is another side of the story: the use of capital markets, financial instruments and financial institutions to wage a war that is just as violent as the physical one. The difference is the type o...

Hostility could drive strategic behavior. And corporate finance could provide an arena. Competitors, shareholders, credit raters or even governments could initiate the measure. Except for hostile takeovers, this hostile strategic behavior is seldom addressed within strategy frameworks. And is seldom related to a defensive profile or a repulsive str...

There are reasons to believe that the finance industry is going through fundamental strategic shifts that will change many of the underlying premises and the ensuing processes. Events of 2008 and beyond have induced the nearest thing to a shock and several post shock tremors continue to emerge. The ultimate apparent outcome is a significantly diffe...

Investment capital markets have been displaying signs of disarray and are significantly damaged. This is especially manifest in the case of the USA and some countries in Europe. Symptoms of this damage are visible. The operators are declining in number, contracting in scale and losing in asset base. The products are losing glitter and are shunned b...

Purpose – Investment capital markets have been displaying signs of disarray and are significantly damaged. This is especially manifest in the case of the USA and some countries in Europe. Symptoms of this damage are visible. The operators are declining in number, contracting in scale and losing in asset base. The products are losing glitter and are...

As stated earlier, a great measure of environmental turbulence has been taking place in the last decade. This has altered many of the economic, social, technological, and even political dimensions of business. This process is bound to continue. And with it, many of the cornerstones of business and corporate structures. Ownership, structure, leaders...

Corporate strategic behavior is undergoing radical change, a change that is touching the way the concept is formulated, expressed, and implemented. To understand the dimensions of this change let us recall that strategy is the science and art of identifying means for achieving an end. As a term, it encompasses a complex web of thoughts, ideas, insi...

Conceptual frameworks for strategy formulation and strategy choice are running out of steam. They are losing a great deal of relevance within rapidly and radically changing environments. Decades of largely positive, fairly stable, and reasonably consistent growth in output and trade are giving way to widespread dramatic decline in economic activity...

The role of technology in corporate strategy is changing dramatically. Traditional research and development (R&D) is giving way to what is being recognized today as disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovations are changing a fundamental premise of strategic thinking. They do not follow the classic model, entering the market as cheap substitutes fo...

Naked facts conceal a strong cultural dimension of the credit crisis. Cold data on the volume of credit default swaps (CDSs) or collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) convey a harsh economic reality but little in terms of the cultural roots of the decisions that have led to these ominous events. Suggested solutions focusing on the need for a change...

The USA was, for years, the scene of a measure of industry concentration or the dominance of key industries by a few operators (United States Census Bureau, n.d.) A merger and acquisition (M&A) drive drove this process and led to the emergence of visibly high concentration industries such as automobiles, beverages, cigarettes, and retailing. Howeve...

Michael Porter’s competitive strategy model, the five forces, has been with us for years. It gained recognition and became an industry standard. The logical framework, with suppliers and buyers, as well as entrants and substitutes constituting a multiple of competitive forces, scored points. Yet the model was introduced in the mid-1980s, a near thr...

Visions are inherent in successful corporate management. Visionary business leaders have led successful corporations as varied as Microsoft and McDonald’s, and have managed to achieve unprecedented levels of success. Their visions projected a desired state of the future and the position that their organizations would take. They not only succeeded a...

The analysis carried out in Part II leads to the contention that the near future will witness a change, if not a fundamental shift, in many of the basic tenets of strategic thinking. Uncertainty will reach a level where future outcomes of possible strategy choices will be difficult to project. This will touch every aspect of strategic thinking: the...

Control is an essential element of the process of strategic thinking. Yet different types of control require different interventions and deliver different outcomes. Operational and managerial control could fail at times, especially when it comes to the repositioning of the corporation or search for congruence with environmental shifts. They provide...

Data support the notion that several industries are dominated, in the USA in the first place, by a limited number of players. This is recognized as concentration. It is the exercise of control over an industry by a limited number of players. Those could number, according to current standards, four or fewer. They share within them the fate of the in...

Innovation does not always carry that aura of effectiveness (Baregheh et al., 2009). Recent histories of innovation in the finance industry reveal a strikingly negative outcome. Structured finance products have led, in widely publicized cases, to asset loss, investment institution collapse, massive government intervention, and, last but not least,...

Investment capital markets have been displaying signs of disarray, and are significantly damaged. This is especially manifest in the case of the USA and some countries in Europe. Symptoms of this damage are visible to the naked eye. The operators are declining in number, contracting in scale, losing in asset base, shrinking in prowess, and losing s...

Determinants of competitive behavior are changing, dramatically. Powerful forces are changing the very shape of the “theatre” in which competition is taking place and inducing a profound reconfiguration of the terrain. Capital markets are changing in scale, products, reach, and risk. Technology is assuming new dimensions and disruptive values. Glob...

The dramatic business and economic events of the last decade are inducing far-reaching changes. One of those is in the competitive behavior of firms. Conventional patterns of competitive behavior are giving way to unconventional approaches and reconfigured goals. One can trace this in the strategic course of events of a wide array of corporations,...

China’s economic performance over the last two decades has been impressive by any measure. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth, investment level and quality, infrastructure, employment, and citizen welfare have all recorded impressive levels. However, the global economic and political environments are changing. Key economic players as the USA and E...

Failure of many a structural finance instrument can be largely attributed to the underlying process of credit rating. The process whereby amorphous and at times dubious finance instruments were offered to unsuspecting buyers went out of line when clients, driven by ignorance and greed, took the credit rating of those instruments at face value. This...

The onset of the credit crisis has brought about a frantic search for solutions. The problem assumed massive proportions in the USA and induced waves of economic instability in other countries, including China. The USA unleashed a massive set of policy instruments with the explicit aim of regaining economic balance. Those stretched all the way from...

Very soon after the crash of 2008, most of the conventional conceptual and operational frameworks for strategy formulation and strategy choice ran out of steam. Five years later, as this author notes, the search is still on for more compatible models for strategy analysis, formulation, choice and implementation. In this article he offers a model an...

Strategy | September / October 2012 Dramatic business and economic events of the past decade are inducing far-reaching changes in how firms behave. One of the more conspicuous changes is in competitive behavior, where conventional patterns have given way to alternative, systemic approaches. This is behavior in which the firm seeks continuity and do...

Harvard’s Michael Porter competitive strategy model, the five forces, has been with us for years. It gained recognition and became an industry standard. The logical framework, with suppliers and buyers as well as entrants and substitutes constituting a multiple of competitive forces, scored points. Yet the model was introduced in the mid eighties,...

Ansoff's Matrix, Porter's Five Forces competitive analyses and Drucker's Management By Objectives are 3 of the best known and most frequently applied management concepts. But are these vaunted concepts, incubated and given meaning in a relatively calm and predictable economic environment, valid in today's much harsher and turbulent climate. Readers...

The recent downgrading of the United States' credit rating brought into focus the fact that sovereign credit rating is today a largely unregulated industry. While a rating is a prime driver of investment decisions and collateral eligibility standards, it is also a potential, though inadvertent, contributor to global financial instability. This auth...

Culture has been consistently ignored in current search for the roots of the credit crisis. Cold data on the volume of Credit Default Swaps (CDS's) or Collateral Debt Obligations (CDO's) convey a harsh economic reality but little in terms of the cultural roots of the decisions that have lead to these ominous events. This article provided an attempt...

The Problem Design, random events and luck combine in order to make a success of an offshore outsourcing industry supplier. Case histories of successful offshore service providers in countries as varied as India, Ireland and the Philippines support this observation. The design, and handwork, elements do weigh heavily but random events can boost or...

Determinants of competitive behavior are changing and competition will never be the same again. Powerful forces are changing the very shape of the "theatre" where competition is taking place and inducing a profound reconfiguration of the terrain. Capital markets are changing in scale, products, reach and risk. Corporate strategies are changing in f...

Entrepreneurship is the process of identifying opportunities and exploiting those. Several scholars played a role in conceiving the concept and giving it its intellectual content; four did that with a distinction. They are Joseph Schumpeter, Peter Drucker, David McClleland, and Henry Mintzberg.

The airline industry is a volatile industry plagued with excessive losses, restructuring, and bankruptcies. There is a long history of bailout packages in the United States, and efficiency seeking mergers in Europe. The industry is cyclical. Four or five years of poor performance proceed five or six years of improved performance. But profitability...

Small business is a powerful tool of economic growth. It generates employment, creates new businesses, adds value added, stimulates exports, substitutes imports and complements large business. This has proved to be the case in countries as varied as Thailand, Ireland, and Japan. In Thailand the small business sector provides the backbone of several...

Capitalist thinking induces the most creative patterns of strategic thinking. And the very shift from non-market systems of economic organization into a market-based structure induces this strategic creativity. Symptoms of strategic behavior are varied, ranging from the introduction of financial market tools and instruments to the increase in priva...

Strategy and strategic planning are children of the 1960s. Their fathers, Igor Ansoff and George Steiner, stressed the notion that strategy formulation is a top management function and that strategy making is a systems process where inputs lead to measured outputs. Strategy making, according to those early pioneers, was supposed to be a neat and or...

Family businesses are abundant in Arab countries. Gulf States are no exception. They compensate for the rather weak small business framework, the fragile stock markets, and the dominant government-owned enterprises. This is very much the case in countries as different as Morocco and Libya in North Africa, and Kuwait and Bahrain in the Gulf. Roots o...

Privatization is a prevalent strategy made popular by the advent of free-market thinking. It is done in the name of efficiency, fiscal reward, wealth distribution, and competitiveness. Arab countries followed the trend. Household Arab corporate names, as Saudi Arabia’s Saudi Telecommunication Co (STC) and Egypt’s Omar Effendi, the nation’s prime de...

Venture capital and private equity investment are fairly new phenomena in GCC countries. The initiatives are recent and the learning curve is yet to unfold. Small business relies, traditionally, and the GCC states are no exception, on savings, personal loans, and family reserves, contributions by friends and associates, and, venture capital. Ventur...

The book provides a thorough analysis of strategy formulation at country and company level in Arab countries and corporations. It also deals with the issue of entrepreneurial initiative in Arab countries and issues actual practice of entrepreneurship. Role of the financial markets, especially venture capital and private equity are examined.

Competitiveness is the issue of the decade. Country competitiveness could have far reaching implications to the country's scale and scope of contribution to international trade, its ability to attract foreign direct (and indirect investment), its ability to gain access to international forums as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and last, but cert...

Sumario: Work on strategy has only recently been paying attention to the role of vision in the strategic management process and the possible relationship between vision and concepts as creativity, leadership and entrepreneurship. Analysis, however, has not been uniform in defining the core issues itself or in positioning vision within the overall s...

The essence of the article is that small enterprise development efforts in many countries, should avoid commonly accepted fallacies and benefit from contemporary research finding as well as cross country experiences. The process should be looked at as a strategic effort where the policy frame is set as a response to identifiable constraints or barr...