华威商学院

Although artificial intelligence (AI) has become increasingly smart, its wisdom has not kept pace. In this opinion article, we examine what is known about human wisdom and sketch a vision of its AI counterpart. We introduce human wisdom as strategies for solving intractable problems-those outside the scope of analytic techniques-including both 'object-level' strategies, such as heuristics (for managing problems), and 'metacognitive' strategies, such as intellectual humility, perspective-taking, or context adaptability (for managing object-level task fit). We argue that AI systems particularly struggle with this type of metacognition. Wise metacognition would lead to AI that is more robust to novel environments, explainable to users, cooperative with others, and safer by risking fewer misaligned goals with human users. We discuss how wise AI might be benchmarked, trained, and implemented.

This study examines the effect of service-oriented manufacturing business models on firm performance and the drivers of the performance disparities across adopters. Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we identify necessary conditions for diversification into services, and also for translating this into performance. Using data from 15,732 UK manufacturing companies in the period 2010–2021, we demonstrate that service offering increases the productivity, profits, and turnover of manufacturing firms. The increase intensifies with the extent of the offering and is contingent on firm specific resources related to implementing the business model innovation. The diversification strategy is more common in firms with large human capital resources, with financial difficulties, and those facing high levels of competition. It is less likely among firms with alternative options for diversification, such as internationalization.

Sensible foolishness through play can offer a valuable escape from prevailing dogmas and rational models of intelligence, affording actors freedom to explore, imagine, and create without constraint. Yet the value of sensible foolishness, and the vital interplay between play and reason, remains underexplored in strategy scholarship. Drawing on a qualitative experimental study of three SMEs, we examine how high-stakes strategic challenges can be addressed through sensible foolishness. Our analysis shows how the interplay between play and reason gains generative momentum during strategy-making workshops, as actors co-create playful atmospheres and shift into more expressive, embodied ways of being. We identify three transitional modes - deliberate, dialectical, and dwelling - through which actors integrate play and reason and co-produce moments of strategic insight and value. We develop a process theory of integrating sensible foolishness into strategy-making, showing how attuned facilitation and atmospheric shifts enable its enactment as a collective, affectively sustained mode of strategizing. This extends debates in strategy and serious play scholarship by advancing a practice-based view of sensible foolishness as a complementary instrument of collective strategic intelligence.

This paper examines how Ecuador can develop a sustainable space ecosystem under limited institutional, fiscal, and technological autonomy. Rather than treating space development as a linear progression toward launch or full satellite sovereignty, the study combines a historically grounded Ecuador capability baseline with established space-power and technology-development frameworks and a transparent, literature-derived pathway-screening method. The revised baseline shows a dual structure: a long public-sector lineage in remote sensing and geoinformation through CLIRSEN, the Ecuadorian Space Institute (IEE), and the Military Geographic Institute (IGM), alongside non-state engineering capabilities demonstrated by the Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency (EXA), including nanosatellite missions and small-satellite subsystem development. Nevertheless, Ecuador lacks a sustained national space program, independent launch capability, and full-mission industrial autonomy. A regional benchmark using verifiable criteria confirms that Ecuador is best characterized as a limited-capability, low-autonomy actor with meaningful user-segment and niche subsystem capabilities. A structured qualitative multi-criteria screening then evaluates alternative development pathways in terms of capability fit, public value, autonomy effects, capital and scale requirements, and opportunities for networked cooperation. The analysis identifies Earth-observation and data-service applications in agriculture, environmental monitoring, and maritime domain awareness as near-term priorities, while treating upstream manufacturing and launch as conditional, longer-term options. The resulting policy recommendations emphasize institutional coordination, resource sharing, ground and data infrastructure, targeted human capital, and demand-led public-private cooperation.

Purpose This paper develops the concept of Fractional CEO Architecture as a strategic leadership response for resource-constrained firms that need senior executive capacity before they can justify a full-time chief executive officer. Design/methodology/approach The paper is conceptual and uses phenomenon-based theorising with a theory-adaptation design. It integrates strategic leadership, dynamic managerial capabilities, sensemaking and trust-in-leadership scholarship to specify the fractional CEO as a multidimensional leadership architecture. South Africa’s World Bank Enterprise Survey 2020 country profile is used as contextual grounding to illustrate the business environment pressures that make executive bandwidth strategically salient. Findings The paper argues that fractional CEO arrangements shape outcomes only when the surrounding governance architecture converts limited executive presence into strategic coherence, transformation momentum and stakeholder confidence. The fractional CEO construct is specified across six dimensions: temporal allocation, decision authority, embeddedness, accountability, governance coupling and transition pathway. Executive bandwidth is also specified as the senior leadership capacity to interpret signals, decide, coordinate, manage stakeholders and sustain confidence at the pace required by strategic complexity. Research limitations/implications The paper is conceptual and does not empirically test fractional CEO performance or adoption. South Africa’s Enterprise Survey is used only as contextual grounding, not as direct evidence of fractional CEO demand. Future research can test the proposed architecture through comparative surveys, longitudinal case studies and mediation models examining whether strategic coherence and transformation momentum explain stakeholder confidence in fractional CEO arrangements. Practical implications The paper offers a Fractional CEO Architecture Diagnostic to help boards, founders and investors design, govern and review fractional CEO engagements before they drift into ambiguity. Social implications Fractional CEO arrangements may widen access to senior strategic leadership for resource-constrained firms that cannot yet afford full-time executive capacity. Better-designed leadership architecture can support growth, employment stability and organisational resilience, particularly in constrained markets where infrastructure, finance and regulatory pressures absorb senior management attention. The model also encourages clearer accountability and more responsible governance. Originality/value The paper reframes fractional CEO arrangements as a strategic leadership architecture rather than part-time staffing. It advances eight propositions and shifts attention away from hours worked towards the governance architecture that makes partial executive presence effective.