Bla Bla ? HBS Strategy 101: Strategy Development in a Red Ocean

Strategy development is a broad but important part of any business, enterprise or small, and as a result, there are numerous techniques geared towards this strategic area. To begin with corporate strategy development, you must frame your strategic barriers by defining where you want your company to be, how you can get your company there, and where you currently are. The evolution from your current state to your desired end state is a matter of strategy development and strategy execution. Even though the end desire of any corporate strategy is winning, it involves a number of non-trivial pieces, including defining your companys value proposition, competitive advantages, and business transformation.

Joseph Bower places the emphasis of the strategic planning and budgeting processes are at the heart of strategy development. Bower defines strategic intent as the perceived and communicated primary strategy. Capital market context is also looked at, which is defined as demands and influence of providers, such as investors. Organizational context is composed of governance and the organizational structure, basis of performance measures and rewards, and managements beliefs and cognitive frames. RAP based strategy planning and budgeting is a bottoms up driven way to identification and selection of business initiatives. Within the RAP framework, when we look at market context, we are evaluating the demands of those customers that make up the major sources of revenue,and technology development. This framework is called the Resource Allocation Process RAP framework.

In current thinking, there are two pillars around strategic management. In organizational configuration, the organization takes on behaviors based on adoption to contexts. Mintzberg also advocates a transformation of business practices, where management recognizes the need and has the ability to manage complete business optimization. Henry Mintzberg opts for an organization, bottom-ups strategy to drive strategy development that adheres to organizational configuration.

Strategy development has evolved through 5 key stages over the years. Shifts in strategic mindset represent an ever evolving, emerging thought leaders, and emergence of disruptive technologies and trends. In the current day, the strategic development theme is on integrating strategic planning and implementation with a stress on the primary notions of core competencies, strategy planning and execution, and balance scorecard analysis. Strategy development started with a focus on financial planning in the 1950s, moving to sustainable planning in the 1960s, to strategic planning in the 1970s and ultimately to a focus on strategic management in the present day. A lot of corporate strategy is also hinged on ideas in the 1970s, where the core theme was around thinking strategically to beat competition and the business frameworks of alternative strategies, portfolio analysis, and the BCG Growth Share Matrix were developed.

The way business leaders evaluate and analyze strategy within that of contemporary businesses has been shaped by military strategists since 400BC when Sun Tzu wrote the Art of War. Sun Tzus thoughts about the factor of terrain, in todays business landscape, translates to markets, industry structures, market positions, and Porters Five Forces. Sun Tzu hinted at indirect strategies when he said winning without fighting is the pinnacle of skill on the battlefield. Sun Tzu preached to know and attack the enemys strategy. In Sun Tzus Art of War, he spoke about five core factors in military strategy and each of these factors can be directly translated to terms of business strategy.

LearnPPT.com is a great website for understanding and refining strategy development fundamentals. It contains a large library of business strategy presentations outlining different forms of business strategy frameworks and ideologies. Their corporate strategy and presentation materials are used globally in over 50 countries in global Fortune 100 corporations. In its growing collection, there is a strong focus on strategy development, the strategic planning process, and related concepts. LearnPPT asserts that all documents were developed by strategy and management consultants from established consultancies, such as McKinsey and Bain. There are many PowerPoints covering supporting functional areas, such as governance, supply chain management, as well as workshop planning.
Strategy Development

Source: http://blasite.com/2011/09/hbs-strategy-101-strategy-development-in-a-red-ocean/

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