Sign in Subscribe

Developmental Strategy: Strategic Actor and the Weave-the-Strategy Toolkit (Book, 2026)

Last updated on 

Revisiting the “Strategy” Theme from the GO Theory Perspective

by Oliver Ding

October 14, 2026

This article introduces a new possible book.

This book begins with a recent return.

In September 2026, I completed a Revisiting-and-Rebuilding project on the Knowledge Strategy series—the trilogy of manuscripts I had written in 2025 (Knowledge Strategy, Castle and Forest, and Wonder and Wander). That project was gathered into a collection titled The Gejunction of Knowledge Engagement, which documented how each of Gejunction’s four aspects—RelationFields, Thematic Spaces, Living Coordinates, and Weave-points—could be turned back on the earlier work and used to finish what it had left undone.

While working on that collection, something shifted. The Gejunction lens had done its job, but it also opened onto a larger territory. In the two weeks that followed, I moved from Gejunction to the whole GO Theory platform and began to reflect on something I had not previously attempted: the full arc of my engagement with the “strategy” theme over many years.

That reflection became an article titled Developmental Strategy: Revisiting the “Strategy” Theme from the GO Theory Perspective. It traced how terms such as “Advanced Life Strategy,” “Ecological Strategic Cognition,” “Knowledge Strategy,” “Life Strategy,” and “Strategic Developmental Psychology” were not separate projects but moves within a single thematic space—a slow cognition process through which a theme gradually becomes a concept system. It proposed Developmental Strategy as the functional way of supporting the unfolding of subjectivity, the development of thematic enterprise, and the development of thematic creation.

This book takes that article as its starting point and expands it into a full theoretical enterprise. It presents Developmental Strategy as a general framework for individual life strategy, organized across four parts: the concept itself, the strategic actor who enacts it, the Weave-the-Strategy Toolkit that operationalizes it, and the knowledge ecology that sustains it.

Part 1: Developmental Strategy


Part 1 introduces the concept of Developmental Strategy.

Guided by three lenses—Developmental Functionalism, Thematic Space Theory, and Ecological Formism—it proposes that strategy can be understood through three perspectives:

  • Strategy as the Unfolding of Subjectivity (Ch2), drawing on the Coordinate–Center–Gejunction framework, which describes how subjectivity becomes located, organized, and synthesized.
  • Strategy as Anticipatory Activity (Ch3), drawing on the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) and the Enterprise Development Framework, which describe how individuals and enterprises orient present action toward future achievement.
  • Strategy as Engaging with Social Ecology (Ch4), drawing on the HLS framework and the concept of strategy as a concept system, which describe how strategic frameworks are situated within the social world and transform across individual and collective levels.

Together, these three perspectives answer the question: What is development, and what is strategy for?

Part 2: Strategic Actor


Part 2 turns from the concept to the actor.

If Part 1 asks what strategy is, Part 2 asks who enacts it. A strategic actor is not an abstract decision-maker but a living person whose development unfolds across multiple social worlds. This Part introduces the actor through three dimensions:

  • Strategic Actor as Weaver (Ch5), drawing on the Weave-the-Life Framework and the concept of Supportive Self-Actualization, which describe how a person integrates creation and curation into a coherent life.
  • Strategic Agency (Ch6), drawing on the LARGE Method, the L3DW Model, and the four models of agency, which describe how a person exercises agency across social worlds.
  • Strategic Mind (Ch7), drawing on Mental Platform theory, Strategic Frameworks, and the nine aspects of strategic cognition, which describe how a person organizes strategic thought.

Together, these three dimensions map onto the Self–Life–Mind schema: Subjectivity (Self), Agency (Life), and Mind (Mind). They are not separate domains but three analytical aspects of the same unfolding.

Part 3: Weave the Strategy


Part 3 presents the Weave-the-Strategy Toolkit (v2.0).

This is the operational core of the book. It expands the toolkit from a single weave-point (Slow Cognition, the focus of v1.0) to all four weave-points: Slow Cognition, Strategic Moves, Project Engagement, and Ecological Opportunity. Each weave-point is elaborated across three levels—a foundational framework, a mediating method, and a concrete application—yielding a 4×3 toolkit of twelve interconnected modules.

Part 3 also documents how the framework was detached from the Weave-the-Mind toolkit and reattached to the GO Theory platform, and how the term “Strategic Agency” was replaced by “Strategic Mind” to reflect recent theoretical consolidation.

Part 4: Strategic Knowledge Engagement


Part 4 turns to the knowledge ecology that sustains Developmental Strategy.

If Parts 1–3 address what strategy is, who enacts it, and how it is operationalized, Part 4 asks: how should the knowledge community around Developmental Strategy develop? It addresses this through three chapters:

  • Developmental Strategy as a Knowledge Ecology (Ch13), which distinguishes researchers from actors and identifies four types of actors—Theorists, Empirical Researchers, Analysts, and Actors—each engaged in a distinct mode of strategic knowledge production.
  • Ecological Formism as a Meta-Framework (Ch14), which shows how the Variant–Quasi-invariant–Invariant–Invariant Set schema organizes strategic knowledge across levels and enables both top-down and bottom-up knowledge flows.
  • The “Telos – End” Criterion (Ch15), which introduces a critical standard for judging whether a strategy theory harbors hidden teleological inclinations, and tests it against the framework developed in this book.

Together, these chapters complete the circuit: strategy is not only something individuals and enterprises do, but something a knowledge community produces, organizes, and revises over time.

A Possible Book


This is a possible book. It is not a completed manuscript but a curated collection of articles, frameworks, and case studies that have been assembled, organized, and introduced, but not yet formally published. It exists as a possible book: a book that could become a published work, but for now remains an edited manuscript, open to further revision, reorganization, or expansion.

The book draws on materials written between October 2025 and October 2026, including:

  • The original Developmental Strategy article (October 2026)
  • The Weave-the-Strategy Toolkit (v2.0) article (October 2026)
  • Selected chapters from the Strategic Developmental Psychology (SDP) project (2026)
  • Selected chapters from the Weave the Life: The Life-as-Activity Approach (v4.0) book draft (2026)
  • Articles from The Gejunction of Knowledge Engagement collection (2026)

The chapters have been curated rather than composed as a single continuous argument. Each chapter is largely self-contained, and the reader may approach them in any order once the core concepts from Parts 1 and 2 are understood.

Contents


Introduction

  • Revisiting the “Strategy” Theme from the GO Theory Perspective

Part 1: Developmental Strategy

  • Ch1: The Concept of Developmental Strategy
  • Ch2: Strategy as the Unfolding of Subjectivity
  • Ch3: Strategy as Anticipatory Activity
  • Ch4: Strategy as Engaging with Social Ecology

Part 2: Strategic Actor

  • Ch5: Strategic Actor as Weaver
  • Ch6: Strategic Agency
  • Ch7: Strategic Mind

Part 3: Weave the Strategy

  • Ch8: The Weave-the-Strategy Toolkit (v2.0)
  • Ch9: The “Slow Cognition” Weave-point
  • Ch10: The “Strategic Moves” Weave-point
  • Ch11: The “Project Engagement” Weave-point
  • Ch12: The “Ecological Opportunity” Weave-point

Part 4: Strategic Knowledge Engagement

  • Ch13: Developmental Strategy as a Knowledge Ecology
  • Ch14: Ecological Formism as a Meta-Framework
  • Ch15: Purpose: The “Telos – End” Criterion

Epilogue

  • Subjectivity and Strategy

Chapter Summaries

Introduction


For several years, I have worked with the theme of “strategy” through different projects, frameworks, and manuscripts. These projects were connected, but they did not begin from a single, fully developed theory of strategy. Each emerged from a particular research context, addressed a particular problem, and drew on the conceptual resources available at that time.

What makes this book different is the perspective from which I now revisit them. Rather than treating strategy as a concept belonging to a particular discipline, project, or group of people, I approach it as a theme that has developed across my work and can now be reconsidered from the perspective of GO Theory. This shift—from local projects to a platform-level view—is the story behind the present book.

Featured article:

Part 1: Developmental Strategy


Chapter 1: The Concept of Developmental Strategy

This chapter proposes the concept of Developmental Strategy, guided by three lenses: Developmental Functionalism, which defines strategy by its function in development rather than its essence; Thematic Space Theory, which understands strategy as ecological strategic cognition; and Ecological Formism, which organizes strategic knowledge across levels. It draws on the Self–Life–Mind schema and the three focal points of development—Subject, Enterprise, and Creation—to argue that Developmental Strategy is the functional way of supporting the unfolding of subjectivity, the development of thematic enterprise, and the development of thematic creation. The chapter also introduces the “Telos–End” criterion for guarding against teleological inclinations in strategy theory.

Featured article:

Chapter 2: Strategy as the Unfolding of Subjectivity

This chapter draws on The Unfolding of Subjectivity: The Coordinate–Center–Gejunction Framework. It describes three nested layers of subjectivity: Body(Self), Life(Self), and History[Life(Self)], each corresponding to an ecological form—Living Coordinate, Creative Center, and Gejunction. These layers are not stages in a linear sequence; every individual exists in all three at every moment. The chapter introduces several ecological forms (Boundary, Coordinate, Flow, Focus, Center, Circle, Gejunction), the FFCC model (Flow–Focus–Center–Circle), and the Gejunction Analysis Method, which grasps a person’s overall standing through four aspects: Thematic Spaces, Weave-points, RelationFields, and Living Coordinates.

Featured article:

Chapter 3: Strategy as Anticipatory Activity

This chapter draws on the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) framework and the Enterprise Development Framework. AAS is composed of First-order Activity (goal-directed) and Second-order Activity (discovering what the goal should be), which form a self-referential loop. The chapter distinguishes Enterprise from Activity: while Activity Theory studies activity from the researcher’s perspective, Enterprise re-centers the actor’s own experience—the sustained, self-determined line of endeavor as lived from the inside. It presents the Enterprise Development Framework (Creative Theme → Scalable Focus → Center Development → Value Circle → Developmental Platform) and introduces three layers of enterprise development: Developmental Project, Developmental Platform, and Developmental Culture. It also addresses the development of thematic creation—the transformation from Mindentity to Folkentity to Worldentity through the Agency Cascade.

Featured articles:

Chapter 4: Strategy as Engaging with Social Ecology

This chapter draws on the HLS framework, which organizes the social world into five nested systems: Body, Mental, Behavioral, Cultural, and Historical. Within this structure, five aspects of the social world are identified: Project Engagement (Body System), Symbolic Universe (Cultural–Historical boundary), Social Territory (Mental–Behavioral boundary), Social Landscape (Historical–Behavioral boundary), and Thematic Space (Cultural–Mental boundary). The chapter presents strategy as a concept system—specifically, Strategic Frameworks situated in the Behavioral System—and shows how concept systems at individual and collective levels influence each other. It introduces the Six Faces of the Concept System, the Social Landscape Framework (v2.0), and the Ecological Strategic Cognition Framework.

Featured Articles:

Part 2: Strategic Actor


Chapter 5: Strategic Actor as Weaver

This chapter introduces the strategic actor through the Weave-the-Life Framework (v3.0), which curates sixteen key concepts of the Life-as-Activity Approach around a 4×4 diagram. It presents Weave as the integrative action that holds creation and curation together—not a compromise between the two, but the action through which both remain in motion simultaneously. The chapter draws on the Activity–Enterprise–Attachance triad, the Create–Curate–Weave schema, and the concept of Supportive Self-Actualization—the ongoing anticipatory activity by which a Self, accompanied by another, moves from ecological potential to enacted actuality.

Featured articles:

Chapter 6: Strategic Agency

This chapter presents Strategic Agency as the study of action patterns derived from empirical life cases. It draws on the LARGE Method (the meta-method governing all methods within the GO Theory platform), the L3DW Model, the four models of agency (Agency Cascade, Agency Resonance, Agency Threshold, and Agency Frontier), and Supportive Life Discovery—the relational and facilitative framework for supporting others in navigating the FFCC terrain. Together, these frameworks describe how a person exercises agency across social worlds.

Featured artices:

Chapter 7: Strategic Mind

This chapter presents Strategic Mind as the cognitive structures that organize strategic thought. It draws on Mental Platform theory—the concept system that supports a creative enterprise—and the Self-referential Strategy for building a Mental Platform, which distinguishes four types of personal knowledge: S-knowledge, O-knowledge, M-knowledge, and T-knowledge. It presents the “Function — Context — Knowledge — Activity” schema as the meta-framework that situates the Mental Platform within a broader whole, and introduces the nine aspects of Strategic Mind (Anticipating, Performing, Discovering, Producing, Modeling, Unfolding, Storytelling, Curating, Perceiving) as the operational layer of the Curativity of Mind. It also addresses Strategic Curation as one of the four mechanisms of cultural development.

Featured Articles

Part 3: Weave the Strategy


Chapter 8: The Weave-the-Strategy Toolkit (v2.0)

This chapter presents the Weave-the-Strategy Toolkit (v2.0), which expands the framework from a single weave-point (Slow Cognition, the focus of v1.0) to all four weave-points: Slow Cognition, Strategic Moves, Project Engagement, and Ecological Opportunity. Each weave-point is elaborated across three levels—a foundational framework, a mediating method, and a concrete application—yielding a 4×3 toolkit of twelve interconnected modules. The chapter documents how the framework was detached from the Weave-the-Mind toolkit and reattached to the GO Theory platform, and how the term “Strategic Agency” was replaced by “Strategic Mind” to reflect recent theoretical consolidation.

Featured article

Chapter 9: The “Slow Cognition” Weave-point

This chapter expands the Slow Cognition weave-point across three levels. Level 1 presents the Map–Move–Model Schema, a key principle of Thematic Space Theory that gives a method for reading any knowledge framework as a set of Thematic Spaces. Level 2 presents Creative Workfield: The House of Slow Cognition, a meta-map that describes the Slow Cognition method in a thematic map with seven rooms: Aspects, Attachances, Approaches, Maps, Models, Methods, and Meanings. Level 3 presents the Thematic Map Method (also called Thematic Mapping), the practice of making a thematic map from a knowledge framework and developing relevant mapping methods, classified into four purposes: Mapping Situational Themes, Mapping Strategic Moves, Mapping Social Landscapes, and Mapping Strategic Aspects.

Featured articles:

Chapter 10: The “Strategic Moves” Weave-point

This chapter expands the Strategic Moves weave-point across three levels. It begins by establishing a key connection: the Mental Platform and the Strategic Framework are two aspects of the same concept system. Level 1 presents the Mental Platform Framework—a dynamic, self-organizing system of concepts that the mind continuously builds to support purposeful activity. Level 2 presents the Self-referential Strategy—the method for building a Mental Platform through Self-referential Activity, which distinguishes S-knowledge, O-knowledge, M-knowledge, and T-knowledge. Level 3 presents the “Function — Context — Knowledge — Activity” Schema—the concrete framework through which the Mental Platform transforms into a Strategic Framework. A case study of the Container Thinking Journey illustrates the three-level expansion.

Featured articles:

Chapter 11: The “Project Engagement” Weave-point

This chapter expands the Project Engagement weave-point across three levels. Level 1 presents the Anticipatory Activity System (AAS) Framework—the flagship framework of the Life-as-Activity Approach, which understands strategy as anticipatory activity structured by the Self–Other–Present–Future schema. Level 2 presents the Project Engagement Approach—a project-centered social theory inspired by Andy Blunden’s notion of the “project as a unit of analysis of activity,” including the Developmental Project Model with its eight elements. Level 3 presents the “Dramatic Life Pattern” Series—the structural configurations of project engagement that recur across creative lives, including the Creative Watershed and Revisiting–Rebuilding patterns.

Featured articles:

Chapter 12: The “Ecological Opportunity” Weave-point

This chapter expands the Ecological Opportunity weave-point across three levels. Level 1 presents the “Four Positive Frontiers” Framework—Affordance, Supportance, Attachance, and Curativity—each corresponding to a boundary of the World of Life. Level 2 presents the “Difference — Conversion — Opportunity” Schema—the primary model of the Ecological Practice Approach, which describes how ecological differences, when mediated by conversion mechanisms, become opportunities for action. Level 3 presents the Lifechain Model—the Potential–Focus–Actual Schema that describes the dynamic cycle within the Subject–Object relationship, and its expansion into the basic model of lifechain: Focus → Perceive → Select → Act → Reflect → Generate → Impact → Align → Anticipate → Outcome.

Featured articles:

Part 4: Strategic Knowledge Engagement


Chapter 13: Developmental Strategy as a Knowledge Ecology

This chapter returns to the third question raised in Part 1: how should the knowledge community around Developmental Strategy develop? It distinguishes between researcher and actor as two types of strategic knowledge—theoretical frameworks and situated judgments—and identifies four types of actors: Theorists, Empirical Researchers, Analysts, and Actors, each engaged in a distinct mode of strategic knowledge production. Drawing on Kant’s fractal tree as discussed by Andrew Abbott, it shows that the theory–practice gap is not a single divide but a fractal structure, and that the health of the knowledge ecology depends on maintaining the openness of exchange among all four roles.

Featured articles:

Chapter 14: Ecological Formism as a Meta-Framework

This chapter presents Ecological Formism as the meta-framework for organizing the knowledge system of the Developmental Strategy ecology. Its four-layer schema—Variant, Quasi-invariant, Invariant, Invariant Set—offers a principled way to locate different forms of strategic knowledge and to understand how they relate to one another. The chapter shows how knowledge flows in two directions: top-down (theorists produce principles that empirical researchers test and analysts translate into tools for actors) and bottom-up (actors’ situated practices generate insights that analysts refine into mid-range frameworks, which empirical researchers test and theorists integrate into more comprehensive systems).

Featured articles:

Chapter 15: Purpose: The “Telos – End” Criterion

This chapter introduces a criterion for judging whether a strategy theory harbors hidden teleological inclinations. Drawing on Ping-keung Lui’s distinction between Telos (the ultimate purpose in a teleological sense) and End (the concrete goal or outcome in a practical sense), it argues that Developmental Strategy must not be built upon a preordained Telos. Instead, it operates through an End–Means logic: the “Ends” are concrete objectives that emerge within specific contexts. The chapter tests this criterion against the framework developed in this book, showing that the unfolding of subjectivity is not a temporal sequence to be completed but an ontological condition—something happening at every moment, for every person.

Featured article:

Epilogue: Subjectivity and Strategy


The Epilogue returns to a pattern that became visible across several recent projects: the threefold structure of Subjectivity — Agency — Mind. These three are not separate domains but three analytical aspects of the same unfolding, mapping onto the Self–Life–Mind schema. The chapter argues that Subjectivity and Strategy are mutually constitutive: without Subjectivity, there is no one to make a strategy; without Strategy, Subjectivity cannot unfold. Their relationship is circular, not linear—an instance of Self-referential Activity in the domain of strategy. The Weave-the-Strategy Toolkit is an attempt to hold both sides of this circle together.

Featured article:

v1.0 - October 14, 2026 - 3,591 words