The idea you express seems elegant, perhaps an extension of the “design as conversation view” expressed in books such as “The Psychology of Everyday Things”?

I wonder what a semiotician would make of our struggle to bring order to chaos in the strategy process?

There is an unexplored angle on strategy from industrial design. I had some conversations with an outfit called Live/Work based at the design centre in Islington.

Our idea is that if you write down what design is supposed to do (and they are partcularly interested in services) then you will find that it is about bringing more meaning and a kind of useful order to things in a very contextual way. This is a whole new way to do business strategy, but it seems to me that it might be the right way.

I’ve taken a stab at this myself over the last few years, and taken some of them through a full pattern review cycle. The results (and some work in progress) are here http://www.allankelly.net/patterns/

I think the answer is: Yes, you can use patterns and pattern languages to describe business strategy. This is particularly clear when you view patterns as a form of knowledge management.