As Donald Stokes observed, science often progresses first from a practical knowledge of how to do something, to a deeper knowledge of why that something works the way it does. 14 In Thomas Kuhn’s notion of paradigm development, empirical anomalies accumulate that (sooner or later) challenge the prevailing conception and trigger the search for an alternative conception that can incorporate the previously inexplicable anomalies. 15 In strategy, we believe that a number of new and anomalous developments have emerged that require a substantive revision to Porter’s conceptions, and to the four branches of research that Porter’s work has spawned.