Strategy is more of an art than a science.
What companies need is a way to structure thinking and analysis, come to a decision on what to do, and then communicate the strategy in order to mobilize the organization to execute it.
We wrote a mini eBook outlining the s2m Strategic Framework™ This framework provides the structure for analysis and takes the confusion and complexity out of strategy development. Download here.
What we find is the determination of “what to do” is not well-defined for most companies, especially when developing new products. This leads to confusion and conflicting paths resulting in paralysis or poor decisions that seem very obvious in retrospect.
First of all, most companies can’t even agree on what the word “strategy” means.
Mintzberg observed people refer to strategy in 5 different ways:
This is a good way to get a strategy discussion going in your organization. How does your organization refer to strategy? Our firm refers to it as an intended direction or course of action.
You may ask, why is strategy important for product development? 3 major reasons include: