While some management thinkers believe that corporate strategy must be devised by individual experts, others believe such ideas must be as a result of crowd-sourcing. In order to test these theories, a study was conducted by leading business publication – the Harvard Business Review. The study included 884 participants who had to suggest business strategies. Some strategies suggested were repeated, some of them several times over. These were termed the popular strategies. Others were unique ideas suggested by only single persons. They were termed as loner ones. These ideas were then put to the test. It was realized that the popular strategies generally did better than loner ones. However, the very best of the lot were also loner ideas. Thus while group think works on most occasions, for the breakthrough moments, individual expertise counts best. To do this critical thinking needs to be embraced. Also the decision- making framework needs to be broadened so as to pool a wide variety of ideas and information.

Source:https://hbr.org/2016/10/how-the-very-best-strategists-decide