The relevance of the present study is determined by the need to analyze the causes of numerous unsuccessful attempts to carry out a radical transformation of the domestic economy from a theoretical and methodological standpoint, the need for which has increased many times in modern conditions. Numerous unsuccessful attempts to carry out a productive transformation of the domestic economy, which lead to the need to analyze in more detail the reasons for these failures, predetermined the expediency of referring to the world experience in developing development strategies accumulated within the group of describing scientific schools of strategic management. The purpose of the presented research is to consider the philosophy of incrementalism as a key to understanding the processes of formation of development strategies in the school of learning by C. Lindblom from the standpoint of the formation of policies and development strategies in modern conditions. The novelty of the results obtained in the work lies in identifying the reasons why the key aspects in “policy making”, according to the philosophy of incrementalism, the processes are: “serial”, “corrective”, “fragmentary”, implemented in the form of “marginal notes”, despite the fact that the ultimate goals of development and the interrelationships between individual decisions receive extremely little attention. At the same time, a distinctive feature of this study is the identification and justification of the objective and subjective components for each of the six identified key aspects in "policy making", according to the philosophy of incrementalism by C. Lindblom. The practical significance of the results obtained lies in the fact that the obtained description of the philosophy of incrementalism gives an understanding of what the decision makers are actually guided by and, being the key to understanding the processes of formation of development strategies, allows us to understand how to ensure the formation of a strategy from the process "as is" to a scientifically based process “as it should be”.