In this ever more rapidly changing world, successful executives apply their strategic thinking (ST) competence in recognizing the passing market opportunities for developing competitive advantage. ST competence is related to neurocognitive functioning - the mental models (MM) can be Operational (OMM) or Strategic (SMM), which are more conducive to ST. Developing ST is (or should be) one purpose of the Strategic Management syllabus for Production Engineering/Administration undergraduates. But ST development remains a gap. Teacher complaints about students' difficulty dealing with strategic issues ("They can memorize and connect numbers in formulas!") and a preference for operational disciplines focused on the present – the OMM preference instead of the SMM. This paper discusses the ST-SMM, and its teaching-learning process relationships, presents survey results of undergraduate MM, and analyzes the SMM incidence. It concludes that MM may be one of the causes of students' difficulty with the ST demands and proposes alternatives for its development.
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