What is Strategy?

Ask a dozen people what strategy means to them and you’ll probably get a dozen different emotionally charged answers such as this one:

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

– Sun Tzu

The term “strategy” first appeared in modern day management theory only in the 1960s but its roots date back to ancient eastern and western military philosophy. Since then, lots has been published on strategic thinking and planning. In 1998, Henry Mintzberg proposed at least five ways of thinking of strategy: as a plan, as a pattern, as a perspective, as positioning, and as a ploy.

I would argue that while all these definitions look seemingly different, each is a further qualification of strategy by the scope of the strategic intent. To illustrate what I mean, lets start with the most basic definition of strategy as:

A high level plan to achieve one of more goals under conditions of uncertainty.

In an innovation context, the high level goal of a business model is to achieve traction. Strategy then starts out as a deliberate plan to achieve this goal.

Since all businesses share this common goal, best practices inevitably emerge and enable the refinement of the starting strategic plan through the use of patterns and perspectives. Of course, along the way new patterns and perspectives are also discovered.

Zooming in further, while patterns and perspectives are helpful guideposts, no too businesses are exactly alike. Every business needs to differentiate itself, at least from its immediate neighbors, which is where strategy is again applied – this time for positioning or as a ploy to gain a sustaining advantage.