ASSIGNMENT 5

Assignment 5

Executive Summary

Since strategy provides the foundation, direction and impetus for growth, change and profitability, a clearly articulated and well-executed corporate strategy is central to an organization's success. Business strategy itself is a mix of several elements. Some authors have identified these factors as judgment, luck, opportunism and design. This report reviews the impact of these factors and prove that a Business strategy is indeed a mixture of business and science, judgment and design being the scientific part and luck and opportunism forming the arts part.

Assignment 5

A strategy is the pattern or plan that integrates an organization's major goals, policies, and action sequences into a cohesive whole. A well-formulated strategy helps to marshal and allocate an organization's resources into a unique and viable posture based on its relative internal competencies and shortcomings, anticipated changes in the environment, and contingent moves by intelligent opponents. (Tichy 1983 pp.45-49) This paper discusses the statement “Business strategy is a mixture of luck and judgment, opportunism and design. Others argue that strategy is more of an art than a science.”

There are numerous published books claiming to have found the magic recipe for business strategy success, but many fail to acknowledge that luck has a lot more to do with success more often then not. For every successful firm that had a great strategy, there are a dozen firms that failed who had just as good, if not better strategy. Although business strategy does not guarantee a firm's success, it is a critical component to increasing the probability of success(David 1989 Gladwell 2000 pp.56-75 ) Business strategy allows a company to work together. It is the glue that holds the business together and moves it forward. In short, it is a communication guide that allows executives and employees to base their decision making off of. With out a business strategy, businesses lack the organizational structure that they need to move forward or even in the same direction.

The strategy is the coxswain on a rowing team keeping its members rowing in synchronization. However, much like you wouldn't want your coxswain leading the rowing team towards a waterfall, as a business owner, you don't want to lead your team in the wrong direction with a poor business strategy.

Defining your business strategy is an art within itself. Many textbooks claim that strategy is about being different. I would narrow the definition even further and claim that strategy is about being better. Often, being better is derived from executing a set of actions differently than the competition, however finding that gap where your firm can be better than the competition and staying the course is the challenge. Many firms starting out have a tendency to wear themselves thin by being everything to everyone(Markides 1999 pp55-63).

Startups have very limited resources and in order to succeed, startups must have laser focus on the deployment of those resources in order give themselves the highest probability of success. Articulating your business strategy will help your firm maintain its ...