Strategy business press

This article considers how strategic pivoting, traditionally associated with early-stage organisations, can be applied by corporations of various sizes and types. It explores challenges relating to organisational complexity, path dependency, and stakeholder management.

Drawing on data from over 1,000 Danish organisations, this study identifies five key strategic actions that are essential to successful digitalisation.

Business success and pricing are very closely intertwined. Using the airline industry as an example, this study aims to explain how businesses can improve their profitability through creative pricing strategies. The study takes an in-depth look at how airline companies developed innovative strategies to create differentiation between competitors.

Labeling something as “impossible” can be performative and deprive businesses from promising ideas, by activating limiting mental models and self-fulfilling prophecies. Adopting an “everything may be(come) possible” thinking as the default option can lead businesses to discover unexpected and valuable directions and make the world a better place. This paper aims to propose practical insights to harness the power of “impossible” thinking such as considering impossibility as a current and temporary state, adopting an unconventional mindset and redirecting the reflection on what is needed to make...

The second major step in the development of the balanced scorecard was the introduction of strategy maps. Although much has been written about the benefits of strategy maps, there have been relatively few empirical studies that explore their use in a real-world setting. Additionally, the studies that have been done do not focus on the perspective of middle managers and employees who execute the strategy on a daily basis. This study addresses these gaps through observing the construction of strategy maps in two main business lines of a commercial bank. The participating managers are then asked ...

This paper aims to present several tools to facilitate strategic planning and to demystify the situational analysis and the selection of strategy. These tools include situational analysis scorecards for the environmental scan, market analysis, competitive bench-marking and internal resource evaluation along with a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) fit matrix. Business student teams have tested these scorecards in capstone projects with good results; however, the concepts remain works-in-process.

Using examples of well-known companies, this article demonstrates how the long-term success of a company depends on a delicate balance between competitive strategy and effective business models. The authors set out how focusing exclusively on strategy can cause companies to lose sight of changing customer behaviours, whilst overemphasis on business models can leave them particularly vulnerable to competition.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a solution that helps reduce confusion about choice and usage of tools for strategy-making, including the resource-based view (RBV) analysis.

Repeatedly engaging in strategic exercises may lead to a certain weariness, as the same strategic processes are used over and over again. The authors advocate looking at business model as a new concept to challenge existing beliefs and what is taken for granted. This paper aims to better understand how business model renews strategic processes. Does it change the strategic process, or is it a new strategic tool? Based on an analysis of the strategic processes of eight small- and medium-sized enterprises, the authors identify four mechanisms for challenging existing strategic processes: cogniti...

The authors investigate how war game-style activities can be used by leadership teams to create strategic plans. A case study is presented from two competing financial services teams. The two teams had to develop a business strategy to improve both customer satisfaction and market share at the expense of each other, given a finite set of resources.

This paper aims to present 'Meta-SWOT', an alternative tool to SWOT analysis which is grounded in the resource‐based view of the firm. Meta‐SWOT does not take markets and other factors in the competitive environment as given but invites business planners to start from resources and capabilities in determining competitive advantage.