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In his book “The Concept of Corporate Strategy”, Andrews (1987) defines corporate strategy as the pattern of decisions in a company that determines and reveals
Its objectives, purposes, or goals
Produces the principal policies and plans for achieving those goal
Defines the range of business the company is to pursue
The kind of economic and human organization it is or intends to be and
The nature of the economic and non-economic contribution it intends to make to its shareholders, employees, customers, and communities
It is essential that such an activity encompass not just the present but also the future. As such it has two critical aspects to focus on
Current paradigms impacting the present business based on the existing assumptions, technologies and infrastructure
Emerging paradigms that will impact the future based on emerging technologies and ideas
There are 4 key components to corporate strategy development
Visioning: Setting the high-level direction of the organization – namely the vision, mission and potentially corporate values.
Objective setting: Strategic objectives are the big-picture goals for the company: they describe what the company will do to try to fulfil its mission
Resource allocation: Planning, managing and assigning resources in a form that helps to reach a company’s strategic goals
Prioritization: Identifying strategic tradeoffs based on risks, efforts and returns.
Corporate strategy development in the domain of the present and emerging trend is well established, even if it isn’t easily accomplished.
However, we are seeing tremendous uncertainties with the rapidly changing technology and economic environment in the current era. Climate change and the resultant pressure to prepare for a very different low carbon future will impact every industry and require corporate strategy development of a very different focus, preparing for the future.
Such an exercise is important for the following reasons
The commitments that governments are making to combat global warming are drastic and will require dramatic changes by the business organizations
Emerging technologies are creating very distinct possibilities in every industry and are rapidly evolving
The transformation exercises are going to take a medium to long-term time duration that needs to be initiated now for organizations to be ready for the future
Startups are innovating at a rapid pace and are well funded, without the legacy of existing business or systems
Strategy development for the future must therefore be anchored in a strong scenario planning-based process.
Scenario planning enables the identification of several plausible futures, not one definitive future. It enables an organization to identify key uncertainties, possible indicators of future trends that can be recognized and very importantly the key initiates for the future.
At Innovation360 Group, we have built one of the best AI-enabled scenario planning toolkit, Scenarios360®.
It enables us to deliver corporate strategy development projects using scenario planning at a rapid pace. We have a global pool of experts who can leverage the online capabilities of this tool to work with customers across the world.
We have helped many global companies and governments identify future scenarios and develop corporate strategies/government policies in line with these scenarios.
If you would like to explore this topic further, feel free to reach out for a free 60 minute consultation using the link https://bit.ly/talktoKRN
Krishnan Naganathan
Krishnan is a leading innovation consultant and focuses on helping people and organizations innovate and build capabilities for innovation. He brings over 25 years of experience in the industry and consulting. You can reach him by phone / WhatsApp: +919791033967 or email: krishnan@thinkhorizonconsulting.com