The Receding Influence of H. Igor Ansoff: A Multiperspective Exploration of the Rise and Decline of Strategic Ideas

ABSTRACT H. Igor Ansoff played a formative role in the early development of strategic management, yet his ideas have gradually receded from the core of academic and pedagogical discourse. This paper examines Ansoff's declining visibility as a window into how strategic management ideas rise, stabilize, and lose influence over time. Using a conceptual–historical and multiperspective approach, the analysis draws on institutional, discursive, and sociohistorical insights to explain why Ansoff's frameworks, once central to strategy's intellectual identity, now occupy a more peripheral position. The paper introduces four dimensions of idea movement—visibility, centrality, resonance, and endurance—to clarify the mechanisms through which management ideas are sustained or displaced. Viewed through this perspective, Ansoff's trajectory illustrates how changes in rhetorical form, pedagogical uptake, and the broader symbolic economy of management knowledge shape the afterlives of foundational thinkers. The case contributes to broader debates about how management ideas are amplified, reinterpreted, or forgotten as fields evolve.