What is Strategy?

Patrick McConnell

This chapter provides an introduction to the concept of corporate strategy, which is an enormous topic, with libraries of academic and practitioner literature. However, the chapter will not provide a comprehensive overview of that literature but will first review concepts such as vision, mission and strategy before discussing the reasons why new strategies may be developed and the process of strategy development and strategic planning. The chapter also introduces a related and important topic – the business model – and introduces the concept of strategic risk.

WHAT IS STRATEGY?

“Strategy” is a flexible term, used to describe something that a particular group believes to be important and not easy to achieve. It is used, for example, to describe military manoeuvres (both attacks and defence) and, at the other end of the spectrum, in investment banking to describe a related series of trades that have a specific purpose. In this book we will be discussing and dissecting so-called “corporate strategy”, or the aspirations and plans of management to change a company over a period of time, usually some five to seven years in the future.

The word “strategy” comes from warfare. In