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7/9/2009 StrategyI am particularly interested in business strategy however strategy as a whole is becoming a recurring theme in my conversation as of late. From the fourth of July US war of independence military strategy from History.com to my team strategic choices and the impact on the business, I find myself talking about strategy a lot lately. What is Strategy? An approach for mobilizing resources to achieve specific future-oriented objective. The key is to anticipate a future state. In business strategy there are natural forces that one must consider when thinking about strategy this include industry status, competitors (the players), Capital (investment required and profit potential), external factors. Strategic thinking requires hard, fact-based, logical information, that questions everyone's assumptions while minimizing the resources required to win by being indirect and unexpected rather than being predictable. Rule #1 of business strategy – follow the money: understand the fundamental economics of the industry before creating the strategy. 10/28/2007 In the pressBelow is a link to a recent article, where I was quoted. I hope it get picked up more and this is form my old job, and I plan on getting more press visibility with this current role. The Mobile Enterprise — Wanted: A Unified Infrastructure on Managing Automation 5/7/2007 StrategyThere are few words I have seen abused in my business career like the word "Strategy". Poeple often use words that they dont have a full grasp of the meaning off, hence they tend to use those words out of context \ˈkän-ˌtekst\.
Definition - Strategy is an approach to mobilizing resources, to achieve future oriented operational objective.
I think we should use three examples to bring a practical description to these concepts as opposed to an academic viewpoint.
The three personas (which are ones I am relatively familiar with) are:
1. A person and/or a family unit (maybe me, maybe not)
2. A small/medium business (@ startup)
3. A 3rd world country (in this case Nigeria)
Back to my theme of a person as a business, education could be a strategy to achieving income. In this case the approach is to get an education, the resources is time, intellect and maybe tuition money, the future operational objective is to have certain level of income say 12000 naira per year.
The objective of a strategy is to develop a sustainable competitive advantage that delivers long term results higher than comparable averages and adequate to sustain growth.
Let me explain, in the case of a person - it is just not enough to get an education, if that is what everyone else is doing. You have to get one that gives you an edge or competitive advantage over other people that you compare yourself to e.g all 27 years old men in Nnewi. Another test of a strategy is that this education has to provide intrinsic opportunity for improvement and growth, because as human beings once we reach our goals, we reach for a new one.
Coming soon on strategy:
4/30/2007 What is Business?How many people do you know, who will like to be in business or be a business person? In fact most people already are, they often just don;t know it.
Businesses are organization that manages resources to achieve objectives.
Organizations - large or small, simple or complex, for profit or non-profit, single or double bottom line focused.
Objectives - explicit or implicit, financial or non financial
Management - is an integral part of every businesses - the process of acquiring, allocation and control
Resources - are scarce includes people, money, time, hard assets, soft assets including reputation etc.
From this definition, most organizations are a business in one form or the other including for example your church, school or even household in some sense.
Businesses have different structures, goals, means and results but they all share common economic, financial and success factors, in addition they all operate in a similar environment, influenced by regulators and other external factors.
Types of business structures include - public or private, profit or non profit, established or startup, diversified or focused, product or services, high tech or not, domestic or international. Thier structure in turn determines a lot about the businesses' nature and strategy.
For more information on Business Basics see the McKinsey 7-S Framework 4/25/2007 Shola on MarketingIt is interesting to me that in blogging, I hardly ever blog about my professional or academic interests. Economics I do blog about in a tangential sort of way. But not in the detailed academic way in which it piques my interest.
One reason for not doing this is because, I don't want to compromise my employers information and what I am learning at work. However, after three years as a marketing professional, I think it is time that I am able to seperate the generic applicable anywhere skills from the confidential information of my employer.
In addition, I will take the time to read up on our blogging policy (seeing that blogging is mainstream now) and I will blog more on my academic passions.
The following is what you can expect to see me blog about in Marketing & Strategy--
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