This morning while browsing through Harvard Business Review (HBR) i happened to stumble across an interesting, informative video covering the fundamentals of strategy. Having taken a number of courses on strategy over the years this video wasn’t covering new ground, however it reminded me about fundamentals of strategy, something i like reminding myself time and again.
Business strategy is one of those terms which gets used quite often in the business world without an appreciation of what it actually means. You’ll find many different definitions of strategy out there, but one of the best that i have come to appreciate is this, “Strategy is about choosing what to do as well as what not to do. Deciding which target group of customers, options, and needs the company should serve is fundamental to developing a strategy. Strategy is also about deciding not to serve other customers or customer needs and not offering certain features or services.”
Check out “What Is Strategy ? It’s a lot simpler than you think” by Harvard Business School’s Felix Oberholzer-Gee.
Here’s another interesting video related to strategy by Professor Roger Martin, previous dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. This one is called, “A plan is not a strategy”.
Harvard Business Review has developed a knack for picking some of the best business leaders out there, getting them to present complex concepts in a condensed format using language that is simple, easy to understand. When i think about business, strategy the other name that comes to mind is the greatest business consultant of all time, Peter Drucker. But more about him in a future post.
