Strategist is the person performing the activities associated with business strategy planning. There are various kinds of strategists in any kind of organization like board of directors, chief executive officer, entrepreneurs, senior management, SBU-level executives, corporate planning staff, consultants, middle level manager, and executive assistants. Each one plays a different role in an organization. The major responsibilities of a strategist are: First, he must assume the responsibility to develop a plan to complete the strategy activities, the plan must be initiated, dates set, deadlines established, and the process must be monitored to ensure that the deadlines are met. Second, basic assumptions about forecasts, economic indicators, technology, and general industry competitiveness must be agreed on and communicated to the functional areas. Procedures must be developed to assure uniformity in the development of the plan. Responsibility for undertaking fundamental studies and valuation of special matters necessary to strategic planning must be assumed. Continue reading
Strategic Management
Strategic management is the art and science of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its objectives. It involves the systematic identification of specifying the firm’s objectives, nurturing policies and strategies to achieve these objectives, and acquiring and making available these resources to implement the policies and strategies to achieve the firm’s objectives. Strategic management, therefore, integrates the activities of the various functional sectors of a business, such as marketing, sales, production etc. , to achieve organizational goals. It is generally the highest level of managerial activity, usually initiate by the board of directors and executed by the firm’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and executive team.
Prescriptive and Descriptive Schools of Strategy – Similarities and Differences
Strategy is a direction and scope of an organization over the long term, which achieves advantage in changing environment through its configuration of resources and competences with the aim of fulfilling stakeholder expectations. Having strategy in an organization is very important because it helps on how to meet the goals in consideration with the organization’s situation. An organization strategy answers all questions about fundamental business whether to concentrate in single business or build a group of several businesses, either to go for a broad range of customers or to concentrate on a market niche, either to focus on a wide or narrow product line, whether to base on competitive advantage with low cost or product differentiation. An organization has to know deeply everything concerned strategic management, strategic levels, and has to reach to the level of achievement of the strategic goals. Organizations also use strategy as the most important tool Continue reading
Strategy Formulation and Stakeholder Influence
Strategy is defined as the direction and scope of an organization over the long term, which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a changing environment and to fulfil stakeholder expectations. A strategic plan is therefore large scale future oriented activities that allow interaction with the competitive environment in order to achieve company objectives. It follows that strategic management is the process whereby a strategy is formulated, evaluated, and continuously improved. Strategic planning flows from the definition of an organization’s vision, mission and objectives and subsequent environmental scanning, to understand the organization’s strategic position with respect to the macro external environment, its industry, competitors, internal resources, competencies and expectations and influence of stakeholders. This initial process establishes a basis for strategic choice by means of a match of identified strengths to opportunities. The translation of strategic choice into action is then implemented across all levels of Continue reading
Types of Defensive Strategies
The defensive strategy is mainly to discourage the challenger firms to attack and is further divided into the pre-entry (protecting a firm by making it difficult for another firm to enter in the same industry – increase the entry barriers or it takes place before the market leader firm is attacked by the challenger firm) and the other one is the post-entry (making the life difficult for the competitor firm once it has entered the market). Pre-Entry Defensive Strategies Fortify and Defend: This mainly works by convincing the challenger firm that it is absolutely unprofitable to enter the market or it decreases the profit expectations of the about-to-enter firm. This is done by creating entry barriers like location, capital requirements, access to raw materials and distribution channels etc. The related firms as an example that can use this strategy would be — aerospace and automobiles. Covering all Bases: This mainly Continue reading
Business Valuation Methods
The cardinal rule of business valuation is, that the value of something cannot stated in an abstract form; all that can be stated is the value of a thing in a particular place, at a particular time, in particular circumstances. Valuation of the target requires valuation of the totality of the incremental cash flows and earnings. Valuation of a target is based on expectations of both the magnitude and the timing of realization of the anticipated benefits. Where, these benefits are difficult to forecast, the valuation of the target is not precise. This exposes the bidder to valuation risk. The degree of this risk depends on the quality of information available to the bidder, which, in turn, depends upon whether the target is a private or a public company, whether the bid is hostile or friendly, the time spent in preparing the bid and the pre-acquisition audit of the target. Continue reading
Seven Sources of Innovation by Peter Drucker
The most effective way to compete in a changing environment is to churn out new products and services rapidly according to the needs of the market. Innovation helps a company to stay ahead of the pack and move into less crowded areas. No wonder all companies are talking about innovation these days. Very often, innovation is misunderstood as invention. Invention is creating new things. But innovation is all about taking new ideas to the market place. History is full of examples of many companies that developed a new technology or product but failed to take it to the market. For example, Xerox developed many of the concepts associated with the modern day PC but failed to make a commercial proposition out of them. Seven Sources of Systematic Innovation “Entrepreneurs innovate and innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship” Peter Drucker – page 44, Innovation & Entrepreneurship Peter Drucker refers Continue reading