Are you sure you have strategy? - Hambrick
- What actually constitutes a strategy? became catchall term
- Strategy: an integrated, overarching concept of how the business will achieve
its have parts
- Strategy has five elements: arenas, vehicles, differentiators, staging, economic
logic
Introduction
- Companies don’t state their strategies, but strategic threads (mere elements)
- There are a lot of frameworks for analysing strategic situations, but none that
talk about the product of these analyses or what actually constitutes a strategy
- Strategic fragmentation; looking at multiple loose things instead of focusing on
the complete picture
- When creating strategic threads, things can get confusing for the management
and they undermine their own credibility
- Great generals have a strategy: they think about the (coherent) whole which
does consists of pieces/elements
- Strategy: a central, integrated, externally oriented concept of how the business
will achieve its objectives
- Without strategy everyone will be messing around
- A strategy consists of an integrated set of choices, but it isn’t a catchall for
every important choice an executive faces
- The company’s mission and objectives stand apart from, and guide, strategy
- Choices about internal organizational arrangements are not part of a strategy
- Great strategies are iterative, loop thinkers
- Key: achieving a robust, reinforced consistency among the elements of the
strategy itself
The elements of strategy
- Consists of 5 parts
o Arenas: where will we be active?
o Vehicles: how will we get there?
o Differentiators: how will we win in the marketplace?
o Staging: what will be our speed and sequence of moves?
o Economic logic: how will we obtain our returns?
- It is important that these five parts form a united whole
Arenas
- In what areas will the business be active?
- Be as specific as possible about the product categories, market segments,
geographic areas and core technologies as well as the value-adding stages
the business intends to take on
o Classes of, or criteria for, selected arenas
- How much emphasis must be put on each business they company will be
active in?
o One most important is possible
- What actually constitutes a strategy? became catchall term
- Strategy: an integrated, overarching concept of how the business will achieve
its have parts
- Strategy has five elements: arenas, vehicles, differentiators, staging, economic
logic
Introduction
- Companies don’t state their strategies, but strategic threads (mere elements)
- There are a lot of frameworks for analysing strategic situations, but none that
talk about the product of these analyses or what actually constitutes a strategy
- Strategic fragmentation; looking at multiple loose things instead of focusing on
the complete picture
- When creating strategic threads, things can get confusing for the management
and they undermine their own credibility
- Great generals have a strategy: they think about the (coherent) whole which
does consists of pieces/elements
- Strategy: a central, integrated, externally oriented concept of how the business
will achieve its objectives
- Without strategy everyone will be messing around
- A strategy consists of an integrated set of choices, but it isn’t a catchall for
every important choice an executive faces
- The company’s mission and objectives stand apart from, and guide, strategy
- Choices about internal organizational arrangements are not part of a strategy
- Great strategies are iterative, loop thinkers
- Key: achieving a robust, reinforced consistency among the elements of the
strategy itself
The elements of strategy
- Consists of 5 parts
o Arenas: where will we be active?
o Vehicles: how will we get there?
o Differentiators: how will we win in the marketplace?
o Staging: what will be our speed and sequence of moves?
o Economic logic: how will we obtain our returns?
- It is important that these five parts form a united whole
Arenas
- In what areas will the business be active?
- Be as specific as possible about the product categories, market segments,
geographic areas and core technologies as well as the value-adding stages
the business intends to take on
o Classes of, or criteria for, selected arenas
- How much emphasis must be put on each business they company will be
active in?
o One most important is possible
