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Traditional approaches to strategy have failed to deliver the hoped for benefits of transformation in too many cases. They do not engage people and they do not foster inventive thinking. This paper aims to declare an exciting new alternative called “strategic conversations” based on the symbiotic disciplines of design and conversation.

The paper develops the new approach through the twin arms of theory and practice. The theory is that the Western world bought the wrong thinking system from Aristotle. It has become seduced by the art of analytics and consequently strategy has become an analytic art. However, Aristotle ' s art for transformation was not analytics but rhetoric which is the ancient forebear of design. Strategy in ancient Greece was an art of rhetoric not an analytic science. The paper pursues how a strategic process built on rhetoric would work based on a major case study from the Australian Navy.

The case study illustrates the practical success of this new approach. It is one of hundreds of such assignments that the author ' s firm has accomplished. The success is measured against three key factors: a growth in agency or shared intent across multiple players; development of possibilities or new options for actions; and the emergence of a community of action.

This approach suggests a major shift in the strategy process, and in leadership skills, towards design and conversation.

The core theory underpinning the paper of the “Two roads to truth” is stunning and broadly applicable approach to thinking skills. A very small group of academics understand the significance of rhetoric, but this paper applies it much more broadly to business and organizations, in a pioneering way.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a commentary and recommendations on systemic approaches to designing and implementing change in organisations.

The paper is a viewpoint on successful change management techniques using action research based on experience in the use of systemic thinking and systems practices.

The use of a systems approach to change using relevant systems practices enables more successful change outcomes.

Change management practitioners should utilise systemic approaches to enable more successful change implementation.

The paper provides valuable advice for practitioners and researchers in change management through the author’s unique experience in systemic change processes.

In the stream of works showing the semantic dimension as a core concept of the product innovation (e.g. design driven innovation), the paper aims to present a new business modeling approach driven by design and meanings. Similarly to the concept that the product is not represented only by form and function but also by meaning, the entire business model of a company does not transmit economic and technological value only, but tells a lot of the company from a semantic point of view. The work seeks to point out that companies can focus on the management of meanings to “make sense” of their entire business model moulded in building blocks, and realize what the authors called meaning strategy.

After a detailed overview of the theoretical background grounded in the strategy literature and design one, to support the authors' perspective, an in‐depth study of meaning strategy performed by illycaffè is presented.

The value of the work lies in underlining that the design driven (product) innovation's application can be extended further than only describing successful (product) strategies of design‐intensive manufactures and in the suggestions on how to implement a meaning strategy, creating new meanings not only in the products, but also in the building blocks of a company's business model.

The meaning strategy content and action‐oriented framework proposed and the matrix business model meanings versus building blocks can become tools to communicate the company strategy's pivotal elements and its evolution and they can drive strategists in developing and managing new/existing meanings and building blocks.