Market analysts and marketing strategists stress understanding the fundamen
tal dynamics of a market, but how deeply do they think about the interplay
of such fundamentals and what frameworks do they use in such thinking? How
do business schools teach managers to think this way ? The premise of this
article is that in their strategizing, senior marketing executives, boards
of directors, consultants, and financial analysts should see the market and
the firm's embeddedness in a market as a moving video rather than a static
snapshot. The authors propose that what makes the video move are fundament
al feedback effects that create the evolutionary paths that a market and a
firm mar travel. A taxonomy of systemic feedback regularities is presented
with applications that demonstrate how the taxonomy and proposed soft mappi
ng techniques can be used to construct dynamic mental models that help mana
gers and consultants improve their dynamic strategic thinking and the strat
egic foresight of firms.