Business Strategy: Basics

Summary

Strategy is a set of tools and frameworks aimed at projecting an organization into the future through the identification of clear goals, of competitors and allies, and of the resources that are needed to achieve said goals. Planning, thus, and execution are the gist of what we usually call strategy. Recent events and evolutions, though, made the whole process more complex. The present material illustrates the basics of strategy and identifies the implications of complexity and uncertainty on how organizations might make sense of rapidly changing environments and make decisions.

Key Take-aways

  • Organisations should strengthen their “strategic tension” by promoting a culture of planning, execution and measurement; 
  • Uncertainty should not cause a decrease in trust on planning and forecasting; unpredictable events should be faced by rapidly transforming assumptions and plans. This is done by continuously putting assumptions under scrutiny (it has to be an organisational and individual discipline) and by developing a multiplicity of alternative plans that might be enacted when the unexpected happens; 
  • Strategy in organisations is thus the result of careful planning and preparedness to change directions in a mindful manner (mindful because reflection on alternative courses of action is continuously practiced by the organisation)

Author/Speaker

Vladi Finotto is associate professor of Business Economics and Management at the Department of Management, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. His research and teaching focus on strategy, innovation, entrepreneurship, with a specific focus on the Food industry. He is one of the co-founders of the Agrifood Management and Innovation Lab at Ca’ Foscari and he serves as the delegate for entrepreneurship and technology transfer at the university.

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