Strategy has evolved to the point at which the more formal analytical methods and scientific methodologies that have proven so successful in other applied areas can and should be exploited to a much greater extent. Several recent strategy publications and working papers provide suggestive evidence in favor of this view.  These new papers use formal methods to explore foundational strategy issues, such as the determinants of performance differences between firms; e.g., what these determinants are, how they operate, how performance should be measured, the extent to which such differences persist, and how various factors serve to increase or limit performance heterogeneity.  In so doing, they succeed in delivering unambiguous definitions and clear logic, and, as a result, overcome some of the key obstacles hindering applications and empirical work. In our judgement, there is much more to be gained by pursuing this line of work, and we seek papers that do so.
 
The two-day conference takes place on Friday, May 14 from 9 a.m - 5:00 p.m. and Saturday, May 15 from 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon.