Strategic thinking and business innovation: Abduction as cognitive element of leaders' strategizing

Given this, the study proposes a theoretical model describing strategic thinking that draws on Peirce's theory of abduction. Leaders' strategic thinking is shown to be similar to the cognitive process of hypothesis formation, and to follow both logical rules and intuitive insights. The proposed model provides guidelines that allow rationality and intuition to go hand in hand, and thus together support the real-world processes of leaders' strategizing. The proposed model is tested by employing the semi-standardized laddering technique on a sample of strategic leaders of service companies.