Submitted by: Submitted by karenbiesuz
Views: 614
Words: 2945
Pages: 12
Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 05/06/2011 11:35 AM
The Power of
Strategic Integration
How can multibusiness
corporations exploit the
opportunities that take
full advantage of their
capabilities and their
potential to pursue new
strategies?
Robert A. Burgelman
and Yves L Doz
A,, multibusiness corporations face the strategic imperative
imposed by the stock market: maximizing the profitable growth of
their businesses. Long-term success in meeting that imperative
requires developing new strategy-making capabilities. During the early
1990s, many multibusiness companies focused on improving profitability
through operational integration. They reengineered, focusing
on the capabilities that would improve speed, quality and efficiency —
and pruning business activities that no longer fit the value-creation
logic of the corporate strategy. Then, starting in the late 1990s, senior
managers began to focus on integrating strategies to add to revenue
growth. Strategic integration involves more fully exploiting growth
potential by combining resources and competencies from business
units and directing those units toward new business opportunities that
extend the existing corporate strategy.'
Today leaders of multibusiness corporations are learning to identify
the inaxiInimi'Strategic-opportunity set — those opportunities that can
let companies take the fullest advantage of their capabilities and their
potential to pursue new strategies. But to exploit those opportunities,
managers need to become accomplished at what we call complex strategic
integration (CSl). (See"About the Research")
Five Forms off Strategic integration
Perceiving the maxiEiiuni-strLUegic-opportunity set and tackling complex strategic integration
are difficult responsibilities. Senior managers must be able to see potential business
opportunities that do not yet exist — as well as the unarticulated strategies that are
at the frontier of what a company is capable of doing. To help with those tasks, we propose
a conceptual...