Understanding Business Strategy: Confusion And Consensus

Description

This book cuts through the strategy verbiage to get to the fundamentals of business strategy—its meaning, formulation, and implementation. Challenges to understanding strategy are examined, including institutions and national culture. Strategy theories are not just explained but assessed in terms of their validity, limitations, and applicability across countries, cultures, and organisations. The thinking and works of major strategists like Ohmae, Mintzberg, Porter, Rumelt, Barney, Prahalad, Hamel, Peng, Kim, and Mauborgne are reviewed in the context of strategic thinking, strategy formulation, and strategy implementation. The confusion and consensus in strategy are highlighted. While not prescriptive in terms of telling the corporate leader how to formulate strategy, for there is no one best strategy or one best way to formulate strategy, the book does identify broad approaches to corporate strategy formulation and implementation and the underlying principles. To this extent, corporate leaders and students and instructors of business and management will find the book informative and instructive. Preface......Page 6 Acknowledgement......Page 8 Contents......Page 9 1 What Is Business Strategy?......Page 11 Strategy According to Porter......Page 12 Test 1: Creating Value......Page 14 Customer......Page 16 Customer Needs......Page 17 Relative Price and Cost......Page 18 Test 2: Tailored Value Chain......Page 19 Test 3: Trade-Offs......Page 21 Test 4: Continuity......Page 25 Test 5: Performance......Page 32 References......Page 34 Strategic Thinking and Strategic Analysis......Page 36 Strategic Planning......Page 45 Strategy Implementing......Page 49 References......Page 54 Industry Structure......Page 55 Criticism of Porter......Page 59 Kenichi Ohmae’s Strategic Triangle......Page 66 References......Page 69 4 The Resource-Based View......Page 70 Firm Resources......Page 71 Core Competence......Page 75 Capabilities......Page 78 References......Page 81 5 The Third Leg of Strategy......Page 82 Institutions......Page 84 Impact of Institutions on Strategy......Page 86 Culture and Strategy......Page 88 References......Page 97 6 Blue Ocean Versus Red Ocean......Page 99 The Strategy Canvas and Value Curve......Page 101 Two Strategic Logics......Page 105 Formulating and Executing Blue Ocean Strategy......Page 107 Is Blue Ocean Strategy All Fluff?......Page 110 Concluding Thoughts......Page 116 References......Page 119 Concluding Thoughts......Page 121 Reference......Page 123 Company Index......Page 124 Name Index......Page 126 Subject Index......Page 128