Strategy Pure & Simple II

"The best competitive position to be in is to have no competition."

"A formal management structure was created as part of the process to assure ongoing reevaluation and implementation."

"Strategic thinking produces a vision, a profile of what an organization wants to become, which then helps managers make vital choices."

"Strategic planning does not strategic thinking make!"

"To me, the first challenge was overcoming the skepticism of my own management that there was a need to go through a conceptual strategic exercise."

"Strategic thinking is the thought process used by a CEO and the management team to 'draw' a picture of what they want their organization to 'look like' at some point in the future."

"What is it that determines the nature of the products, customers, market segments, and geographic areas that a company pursues and those that it does not?"

"If it is not profit, then should every company be customer-driven?"

"A business concept that can serve executives of a corporation as a test bed to make consistent and intelligent decisions on behalf of the company must contain the following elements."

"In our opinion, what determines which way the strategy will go are the areas of excellence that a company deliberately cultivates over time to keep the strategy strong and healthy and give it an edge in the marketplace."

"Companies that can spread the heartbeat of the business and their accompanying strategic capabilities across as many business units as possible are those that will assist that business unit in surviving and prospering."

"Every company develops areas of knowledge and expertise that it adds to over time, and any new product innovation that draws on that knowledge has a high probability of success, whereas any that does not has a high probability of failure."

"No company has the resources or ability to compete against all competitors and should not attempt to do so."

"Most chief executives have a strategy. However, they have great difficulty articulating it to the people around them."

"Critical issues are the bridge between the current profile and the future strategic profile of an organization that management has deliberately decided to pursue."

"These are the Seven Deadly Sins of Corporate Stagnation."

"Technological change takes 20 to 30 years to find a commercially viable application and then another 50 to 70 years before it has an impact on all the nooks and crannies that it eventually will affect."

"In a pull economy, the customer reigns."

"Companies in trouble are still clinging to the outdated market segmentation."

"One of the first impacts of market fragmentation is that it almost makes commodity products and their providers obsolete."

"It's easier to form an alliance with a competitor than to fight that competitor."