The latest Harvard Business Review once again makes the argument that strategy can be more scientific, and suggests that this is an improvement over the more artistic approach to envisioning a future state for a firm.

The idealization of science over art is rampant in management theory and application. Business leaders eagerly look for measurements, data, and empircal proof that they are heading in the right direction. They seek reassurance in a ‘scientific approach’ that involves numbers, graphs, and lines (preferably moving upward).

Forcing visions of the future into scientific models may feed the managerial soul, but I’m not convinced it leads to the promised land.  As I’ve often told clients, if you can prove it is going to happen, you are either a prophet or it isn’t the future, it is just a hope for the past to repeat itself.  In my opinion, numbers and data are wonderful tools for hedging and guiding, but losing the ‘gut feel’ in favor of the so call science of management is dangerous for growth and innovation.

Scientists have long known about the value of art and embraced it as an important part of the scientific process.  It seems that corporate managers and business academics have gotten so invested in a veneer of science as being derivative and rational, they have lost an appreciation for the importance of art. The greatest scientists in history have known the importance of art in their processes of discovery, innovation, and building enduring concepts.  HBR and others may want to reconsider their commitments and their definition of ‘science’ at some point, to broaden the perspective of what is valuable in the so called science of business.