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Category: Business and Industry
Date Submitted: 09/11/2015 12:51 AM
Strategy of Innovation
Are You Sure You Have a Strategy?
Hambrick and Fredrickson, 2005
Abstract
What strategy contains remains unclear, but strategists must have a strategy. A strategy is an integrated,
overarching concept of how the business will achieve its objectives. A framework for strategy design with 5
elements of strategy is presented, since a single, unified strategy must have parts.
Introduction
Quite a few strategy statements are only elements of strategy. Executives are provided with frameworks for
analyzing strategic situations, such as five forces, core competencies, RBV etc. These tools lack any guidance
as to what the product of the tools should be. The use of a tool usually leads towards strategic fragmentation, a
narrow concept of strategy that matches the narrow scope of the tool. For example, five forces leads to thinking
of strategy as a matter of selecting industries and segments.
Strategy has become a catchall term used to mean whatever one wants it to mean. The threads of strategy are
then communicated throughout the organization. However, how can managers do their jobs and set priorities
based on a single element of strategy? In the end executives create confusion and undermine their own
credibility (they do not have an integrated conception of the business).
Art of the General
Strategy is derived from strategos, “the art of the general”. The general is responsible for multiple units on
multiple fronts and multiple battles over time. The challenge and added value lies in orchestration and
comprehensiveness.
A strategy is a central, integrated, externally oriented concept of how the business will achieve its objectives.
Without a strategy, time and resources are easily wasted on disjointed initiatives because managers interpret
what the business should be doing differently. A strategy is an integrated set of choices, but it is not a catchall ...