Strategy execution fails when you don’t create emotional excitement.
How do you do that? Not with slides. Not with speeches.
You make people feel it.

Nokia employees should have used iPhones.
Food-industry teams should taste competitors’ products in their own cafeteria.
We at Aalto shouldn’t stare at our own research output—we should look outward and see where and how we are behind.

Attention-Based View (ABV) argues that structures and practices shape what people pay attention to—and therefore what they do.

But my findings add a critical piece: when you inject emotion into ABV, motivation rises.

Emotion directs attention.
Attention drives action.
Action delivers strategy.

What could your organization do to really feel the competition?


Attention-Based View:

William Ocasio, W., 1997. Towards an attention‐based view of the firm. Strategic management journal, 18(S1), pp.187-206.

William Ocasio, W., Tomi Laamanen, T. and @Eero Vaara, E., 2018. Communication and attention dynamics: An attention‐based view of strategic change. Strategic Management Journal, 39(1), pp.155-167.

My emotional extension of the ABV:
Vuori, T.O., 2024. Emotions and attentional engagement in the attention-based view of the firm. Strategic Organization, 22(1), pp.189-210.

Vuori, T.O. and quy huy , Q.N., 2016. Distributed attention and shared emotions in the innovation process: How Nokia lost the smartphone battle. Administrative science quarterly, 61(1), pp.9-51.