Computational Approaches to Strategy: A Stable Outline

As promised last month when I announced the end of this leg of the sprint, I have worked relentlessly to cut down my 30-page stable outline into something more managable. Unfortunately that ended up being a 26-page outline. Oh well. More strategy and computation for people that like that kind of thing. You can view and download it here. So, after working virtually nonstop on this thing in bits and pieces since late August, am I satisfied?

I think, in terms of general formulation and broad questions outlined, this can be what I have always wanted it to be: a kind of research handbook that no one ever wrote for me. Lacking a kind of SAGE, Elsevier, or Routledge Computational Research Methods in Strategy Research Guide to help guide my work, I decided to effectively write one for myself (it’s about roughly as long as a SAGE Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences pamphlet would be, if you printed it in that size paper).

The middle section is too squishy and mystical sounding for my own tastes. I also know that there are people I need to thank for helping me that haven’t been included in the preamble, and it makes me feel bad to know that. But this also represents an approach that I feel can be reasonably stable. I need, as I’ve mentioned before, to really read Rid and Payne’s 2016 books to get a sense of some core questions and arguments that would be in any real literature review. So what’s next until then? Condensing some of these key questions into something small enough to a blurb for an academic website. Getting started outlining with a mind-map how the two broad questions in 3.2 can be transformed into experiments or research projects, and whether any of the experimental data I’ve already collected might help. And, of course, not typing anything in LaTex of this length for a sufficiently long period of time without learning how to use the damn thing better.

Things have certainly been rough but I at least feel this document is an achievement I can be proud of and a testament to both sheer persistence and a willingness to read damn near anything at this point. And I owe many people big time for holding my hand and pointing the way as I stumbled toward to it.