Testing the quality of your strategy o does your

- Testing the quality of your strategy
o Does your strategy fit with what's going on in the environment?
o Does your strategy exploit your key resources?
o Will your envisioned differentiators be sustainable?
o Are the elements of your strategy internally consistent?
o Do you have enough resources to pursue the strategy?
o Is your strategy implementable?

- Remember
o Integrated, mutually reinforcing set of choices that form a coherent whole
o Can make sense retrospectively but real power is looking at current shifts
▪ Be wary of ‘outcome bias’
• i.e. “it turned out fine in the end”.
o Past performance should not be used as an indicator for future performance
▪ Context is key
▪ Critically evaluating whether this is the best decision, right now.
o Strategy is not static
o Contexts, organizations, or strategy are not static
o You must have feedback loops and performance measurement built into the
strategy itself
▪ Not enough to measure at the end.
▪ You need to purposely create processes for evaluation
▪ “How quickly can we know what is/is not working?”
▪ Make sure you know what to do in case your strategy is not working
▪ Sometimes you get it wrong.
▪ Be aware of the ‘sunk cost fallacy’
- Limitations
o Correct usage of the strategic diamond demands correct use of each and
every other analysis.
o Like every other framework – we produce only a snapshot
▪ Remember that the only constant, is change.
▪ Strategy must evolve and be dynamic
o Can lead to excessive rigidity
o Think carefully about how long your strategy is valid for.
▪ 10 years? 5 years? 6 months? 1 week?
▪ Industry dependent
o Feedback loops and revision not embedded in the model
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WEEK 7 – ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND
INTRAPRENEURSHIP
LECTURE SLIDES
Megatrends
- Large, transformative processes with ‘global reach, broad scope, and a fundamental
and dramatic impact’
- Empowering individuals
o 400m connected in 2000, 3.2b in 2015
o Always on, anywhere, personalized nature of social media
o Rise in experiential consumption
o $5.67tr in socially responsible investments in 2014
Understanding entrepreneurship
- Entrepreneur – someone who starts their own business, often involves seeing a new
opportunity
- Intrapreneur – an employee within a large company who takes direct responsibility
for turning an idea into a profitable new product, service, business etc.
- Essential act is new entry
o Accomplished by entering new or established markets with new or existing
goods or services
o Launching a new venture, by a start-up firm, through an existing firm, or via
‘internal corporate venturing’
o Underlying central concept
- Richart Cantillion – economist and writer
o Essay on the Nature of Trade in General
o Proliferated the idea of entrepreneurship
o Entrepreneurs buy at certain prices in the present and sell at uncertain prices
in the future
- Forms of entrepreneurship
o Entrepreneur – innovator who implements change within markets through
the carrying out of new combinations
o Introduction of a new good or quality thereof
o Introduction of a new method of production
o Opening of a new market
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