What is 'Strategy'?

The term ‘strategy’ proliferates in discussions of business. Scholars and consultants have provided myriad models and frameworks for analysing strategic choice. The key issue of strategy is a clear sense of an organization’s objectives and a sense of how it will achieve these objectives. It is also important that the organization has a clear sense of its distinctiveness.

For the leading strategy guru, Michael Porter (1996), strategy is about achieving competitive advantage through being different – delivering a unique value added to the customer, having a clear and enactable view of how to position yourself uniquely in your industry, for example, in the ways in which Deccan Airways had positioned itself in the airline industry as a low cost airlines.

To enact a successful strategy requires that there is fit among a company’s activities, that they complement each other, and that they deliver value to the firm and its customers. The Deccan Airways example just mentioned illustrate that industries are fluid. It came to prominence by taking on industry incumbents and developing new value propositions. Also, one must reckon that success is not guaranteed.

While there is much debate on substance, there is agreement that strategy is concerned with the match between a company’s capabilities and its external environment. Analysts disagree on how this may be done. 

John Kay (2000) argues that strategy is no longer about planning or ‘visioning’ – because we are deluded if we think we can predict or, worse, control the future – it is about using careful analysis to understand and influence a company’s position in the market place. 

Another leading strategy guru, Gary Hamel (2000), argues that the best strategy is geared towards radical change and creating a new vision of the future in which you are a leader rather than a follower of trends set by others.

We can say with certainty that: "winning strategy = foresight vision"