It summarize six of my favourite references and thoughts from the world of business strategy. It is a selection of strategic thinking that you are likely to come across in company-wide discussions on strategy
They are specifically:
1. Three key strategic principles - from Michael Porter's ground breaking paper 'What is strategy?' 2
2. The Balanced Scorecard method for developing strategy - the process that Kaplan and Norton developed that uses their balanced scorecard as the basis for a company-wide integrated strategy
3. The 6 P's - a checklist for marketeers to analyse products in different markets
4. Porter's five forces - a concept again developed by Michael Porter for assessing competitive advantage
5. Mission, vision and values - three key entities for summarizing corporate strategy
6. The extended Ansoff matrix - A way of summarizing strategy by showing strategic emphasis for different products in different markets
To put it in context, let's go back to our original definition. This was about defining the best future for the organization and mapping the route to achieve it. The diagram below shows our starting point A and the future situation B which has been chosen as the best strategic choice from several options. In creating strategy, therefore, we need to measure point A (our current situation), define our target (point B) and work out the difference, which tells us what we need to do (the strategic plan).