Development Strategy by Design

Abstract

The billion-dollar strategic questions are, therefore, "How do we generate strategy innovations? How do we make a profit and reinvent our organization, our industry and our world?" Unfortunately, although millions of words and thousands of books and articles have been written on organizational strategy, there is little that we can use to help create strategy.In fact, Gary Hamel (1997, 1998; one of the world's most influential business thinkers according to The Wall Street Journal) said the dirty little secret of the strategy industry is that it does not have a theory of strategy creation and does not know where bold, new value-creating strategies come from. As hard as it is to believe, Hamel is right. More than 10 years later, the strategy industry still has no widely accepted theory, methods or tools for the creation of strategy innovations.If these assertions are correct that (1) strategy development is traditionally conceived and developed as an analytical extension of the recent past and present into the future, and (2) that there are no clearly articulated theories or processes for the creation of strategy innovation, and since thousands of people in organizations worldwide continue to formulate strategy every year or so, one would expect the strategies that are developed to be less than successful and/or to be simply variOrganizational strategy is typically conceived and developed as an extension of the past and present. We analyze the market, the competition, the industry, and our internal resources and capabilities. We then reposition ourselves in existing markets or extend our product/services into developing or adjacent markets. The future is assumed to be a linear extension of the past and present, and our rational analytical techniques help us to do this well.What happens, however, when the future is not a linear extension of the past and present? What happens when we want to innovate and reinvent our business model, our industry or our world? How can we radically add value and provide high quality at low cost? How can we reinvent the ailing automobile industry or the airtravel experience? How can we solve the problems of our broken healthcare system, our dysfunctional economy or address global hunger, poverty and terrorism?Rational analyses of our internal and external environments will not help us create a future that is radically different from our past. Reinventing our business model, our industry or our world requires strategy innovation, not just doing what we did last year plus 10% (i.e., 10% more, better, or less expensively).James Carlopio is an author, educator and management consultant who has worked on projects for numerous U.S., Australian, and European organizations. He has published over two-dozen referenced journal articles and five books on various socio-technical issues and has written a regular section for the Australian Financial Review BOSS magazine. He can be contacted at jcarlopi@bond.edu.au and

CA 2025: The Strategic Design of Civil Affairs

“…Both the planning and positioning schools have been shown to be inadequate, leading Carlopio (2011) and others to insist that addressing environmental and organizational complexity require something more than the traditional methods. Camilus (2008) contends ill-defined problems or solutions require a non-traditional method.…”