What exactly business strategy is all about?

Strategic position is based on customers’ needs, customers’ accessibility, or the variety of a company’s products and services.

A company’s unique position relates to choosing activities that are different from those of the rivals, or to performing similar activities in different ways. However, a sustainable strategic
position requires a trade-off when the activities that a firm performs are incompatible. Creation of fit among the different activities is done to ensure that they relate to each other.

It must be noted that the different approaches referred to above to define strategy cover nearly a quarter of a century. This is an indication of what a complex concept strategy is and how
various authors have attempted to define it. To put it in another way, there are as many definitions as there are experts.

The same authors may change the approach they have earlier adopted. Witness what Ansoff said 19 years later in 1984 (his earlier definition is of 1965): “Basically, a strategy is a set of decision-making rules for the guidance of organizational behavior”.

I have tried to give you an assortment of definitions out of the many available. Rather than an assortment, it may be more appropriate to call this section a bouquet of definitions and
explanations of strategy. Each flower (definition) is resplendent by itself yet contributes synergistically to the overall beauty of the bouquet.

The field of strategy is indeed fascinating, prompting an author to give the title-: “What is Strategy and does it matter?”– to his thought-provoking book. Drucker goes to the extent of
terming the strategy of an organization as its “theory of the business”. By means of the deeper insight that developed through years of experience and thinking, they have attempted to define the concept of strategy with greater clarity and precision.

So, you can see that this discipline is in the process of evolution and a uniform terminology is still evolving.

Be the first to comment on "What exactly business strategy is all about?"

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.


*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.