In difficult times, the lure of Grand Gestures can be hard to resist. Big strategies for big goals, solving big problems at a large scale might be hard to agree upon, but these difficulties are Peanuts compared to what comes after. The Canadian Province of Newfoundland & Labrador has a history of economic difficulties and grand schemes to tackle them, and much can be learned from it.
Recently, the provincial government took inspiration from the Great Reset, where key actors at the World Economic Forum decided to deal with COVID and fix the world in the process. Yet, the track record of the Canadian Province shows, and the history of the Great Reset will show, that Grand Strategy not cognizant of what is felt, what happens and what can be organized at the local level is likely to fail. Local identities, local governance and local knowledge cannot be glorified, but they cannot be missed either; they are needed to interpret, implement, and, not in the last place, to criticize and rethink the kind of Resets many are arguing for, far beyond the rugged landscapes of the North
Atlantic.
New paper, with Robert Greenwood and Monica Gruezmacher, in Scandinavian Journal of Management: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0956522122000197
