WEEK 3

STRATEGY MAKING IS LIKE A SCIENCE AND ALSO LIKE AN ART OR CRAFT - WHY?

Strategy making is like a science because it deals fiercely with the analytic, logical, rational and fact based tools, formulations and their implementation. While making a strategy, one has to be careful enough to use the analytic tools properly to assess the environment, then logical and rational facts must be collected then certain types of strategies are chosen and finally comes the implementation part. So, strategy making is more of a science as well.

Similarly, strategy making is more of an art and craft as well because strategies not only deal with the logical and fact based research but they also have to consider the sudden and unpredicted situations, it is a result of good spirit of team work, it includes creativity, innovativeness, compromises, politics as well as at times it has to be very well planned and at times, it has to be emergent and exploratory.

(Nexus, March 9, 2013)

 In your own words and using referenced quotes describe thedifference between intended strategy and emergent strategy

INTENDED STRATEGY	EMERGENT STRATEGY
This type of strategy is well planned beforehand.	This type of strategy emerges incrementally.
It focuses of analyzing and figuring it all out.	It focuses on finding out and exploring.
This type of strategy is formal and structured.	It is kind of informal and unstructured.
It is based on the 'think and act' statement.	It is based on pure 'trial and error' basis.
It is used in forecasting the later trends, time series,  etc.	It is used to experiment various types of situation, products, themes, etc.
This type of strategy needs strategic planning.	This type of strategy needs strategic thinking.

 

(Rapid Business Intelligence Success, 2008)

Choose two of the 10 schools of strategy thought and describe
them in your own words. Try and provide a real world example
for each e.g. an organisation or a situation.

The two schools of strategy i would like to choose would be:

The Positioning School
This theory says that it is economics led and is closely associated with Michael Porter. Here, it is believed that the strategy is driven by the market or the industry. This theory believes that formation of a strategy is an  analytical process that depends on the quantitative data rather than the qualitative data and the strategies are 'off the rack' type of generic options where the formation of such important strategies includes finding a suitable position in the market and the selection of this position is done by the help of analytical tools. This is the main gist of this theory, doing a close research, finding a suitable position in the market and defending yourself to maintain the position.

The process is given below::

1. FIRST, INDUSTRY STRUCTURE IS ANALYZED.

2. IDENTIFICATION OF VIABLE OPTIONS IS CAREFULLY DONE.

3. THE DESIRED POSITION IS DECIDED.

4. THE POSITION IS OCCUPIED OR CREATED.

5.  DEFENSIVE ACTIONS ARE TAKEN TO MAINTAIN THE POSITION.

(12 Manage, 2001-2013)

For example:
We can take an example of Steve Jobs, Apple INC. He analyzed the consumer market and then identified the need of the consumer market regarding the desire of using touch screen hand phones with quality material. He strived towards obtaining the position and after he was successful in doing that he backed up the defensive strategies by creating the applications that can be only used by the iphone users like itunes and many more. 
He also used his brand as his defensive tool by imprinting the image of iphone in the consumer market. Samsung company tried recreating the touch screen mobiles but consumers were very much convinced by that particular product giving it a comparative advantage.

THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SCHOOL
In this theory, the process of strategy formulation is viewed as a visionary process. It focuses more on the methods of a charismatic strategic leadership by centralizing the power in the capable hands of the CEO. Here, specific decisions can be taken under the umbrella of the firm's vision and also the detailed forms of strategies can be emerged. The vision is rich and flexible as it is kept informal and personal. The main entrepreneurial tools or the techniques used or can be used are the intution, gut feeling, insight, etc. 

(12 Manage, 2001-2013)

For instance:
Mr. Min Bahadur Gurung, Bhatbhateni Superstore, Nepal. 

Bhatbhateni used to be a small store of 120 sq. ft. with a single shutter store in 1984. He was a son of a farmer with six siblings. He had a good career in banking sector after the university education. However, he had a vision and courage to leave banking sector and start up on his own. As a result of his vision, Bhatbhateni now is Nepal's no.1 retail sector tax payer with more than 30,000 customers everyday. Now, it has transformed to being the leading supermarket and departmental stores in Kathmandu with branches in Lalitpur, Koteshwor, Chakrapath, etc.
the store in Chakrapath set the current benchmark for the business, with over 1500 staffs with 100,000 products across 2,15,000 sq.ft.

(TOURISMKATHMANDU, 2012)

Write about your experience with today‟s case study. What
answers did you give to the questions?

The case study was very interesting and inspiring for me. This has given me the understanding about planned strategies, experimental ones as well as importance of both of them in the world to succeed. The opportunity to learn new things every session was challenging. These case studies rather help us to understand the unseen and unheard areas till date.

CASE STUDY ANSWERS

• Firms have more a mix of realized strategies that were either deliberate or emergent because they had the experience to deal with the different factors within the industry while an entrant will have realized strategies that predominantly (or all) coming from deliberate/planned strategies — they may be void of strategic learning but it will develop as they progress in the industry space.Google uses a mixture of both where their executive focuses on the advertising business but they allow all employees to offer 20% of work time to develop new products — spawning many products. This is unprecedented but Google allows their engineers to be creative and gives them the time to develop new ideas.The firm's strategy was to make people adopt android that acts like a platform to encourage them to use other services provided by Google. This plan seems to be working and now Google has 26% market. Google has been planning strategies to please the smart phone users in a different way that others can not. this would be deliberate.
• The advantages of being 'experimental' would be - new ideas will be highlighted, people are allowed to think beyond the box, innovations and creativity is encouraged, firms like Google can test their capabilities and survival risks, the work becomes fun, the work has more challenges and also gives the high that the employees want, this high can help them motivate and work more effectively and efficiently.
• However, the disadvantages of being very 'experimental' would be that the cost can be very high while experimenting, the success rate is unknown, there can be various complications in the process, the failure might demotivate the staff, and there can be rise of doubt and conflict within the organisation itself. 
• I think the strategies taken by Google can be viewed as very thought of and fun to work with. I respect the well thought of strategies but the way they have been experimenting in various fields has fascinated me. It is because of their spontaneous way and aggressive analytic research, they are where they are. They understand the need of the lazy consumers like us, they think about making us more lazy with the help of so many applications, programs that we are so dependent on them for even the market price of our day to day groceries. They are fast, smart and most of all forward in thinking. 

REFERENCES

 

12 Manage, 2001-2013. 12 Manage The Executive Fast Track. [Online] Available at: http://www.12manage.com/methods_mintzberg_ten_schools_of_thought.html [Accessed 11 March 2013].

Anon., 2013. Strategic Planning. Strategic planning: Art, craft or science?, 9 March.

Nexus, March 9, 2013. Nexus Management Consulting. [Online] Available at: http://www.nexusmc.com/strategic-planning-art-craft-or-science [Accessed 11 March 2013].

Rapid Business Intelligence Success, 2008. SYD Stewart. [Online] Available at: http://www.rapid-business-intelligence-success.com/emergent-strategy.html [Accessed 11 March 2013].

TOURISMKATHMANDU, 2012. TOURISMKATHMANDU. [Online] Available at: http://www.tourismkathmandu.com/things_to_do/shopping/departmental_store/details/bhat-bhateni-super-market-and-departmental-store [Accessed 11 March 2013].