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Strategic Thinking: Classic Paradigms and New Contextual Applications

Sep 18-2020   



 

A plethora of factors are squeezing the breathing space of companies without a salient competitive edge or potent core competitiveness. They must rely on strategies to win the game by pulling off transformative breakthroughs and value creation, said Xie Xuanli, associate professor at the NSD, during a recent webinar.

 

In her speech on strategic thinking, Prof. Xie made her point by weaving classic strategic literature with corporate examples. Originating in warcraft, strategy is defined in the business world as the formulation of long-term goals backed up with a planned sequence of actions and resources allocation. Companies can tap some paradigms to analyze the fundamentals of strategy before setting goals and delineating a strategic path.

 

Four core questions are to be answered: What are you capable of doing? What can you do? What do you want to do? And what should you do? Respectively, they concern internal analysis, external analysis, core values, and social responsibility. Strategy is where these four aspects share the largest intersection.

 

Strategy is subject to different interpretations, and Prof. Xie quoted the 5P theory of Henry Mintzberg, namely Perspective, Plan, Pattern, Position, and Ploy. She also elucidated the four key features of strategy summed up by Prof. Ma Hao, also of the NSD, in his book Strategic Management. Besides being goal-oriented and long term-natured, strategic decisions tend to involve large-scale and irrevocable commitment of resource as well as interaction with competitors. And it’s critical to understand that competitors might come out of nowhere. A winning strategy, as Garmin the GPS-based product maker has demonstrated, is to sharpen one’s specialization and use defense as the best offense.

 

Market competition can be in various forms and some are cut-throat. A way out is for competitors to cooperate, as evidenced by what Didi and Kuaidi did when Uber entered the Chinese market. Moreover, companies tend to neglect the power of time and overestimate their core competitiveness without acknowledging the advantage of riding on the fast train of the Chinese economy. As the growth slows down, many companies are having a hard time adjusting.

 

Change and strategy are neutral. Companies with strategic thinking can unlock the opportunities in this age. They are advised to combine external and internal advantages, align strategy and actions to zoom in on strategic areas and discard the rest, and bring about new advantages through unique perspectives and innovative thinking.

 

Strategic Thinking: Classic Paradigms and New Contextual Applications

Sep 18-2020   



 

A plethora of factors are squeezing the breathing space of companies without a salient competitive edge or potent core competitiveness. They must rely on strategies to win the game by pulling off transformative breakthroughs and value creation, said Xie Xuanli, associate professor at the NSD, during a recent webinar.

 

In her speech on strategic thinking, Prof. Xie made her point by weaving classic strategic literature with corporate examples. Originating in warcraft, strategy is defined in the business world as the formulation of long-term goals backed up with a planned sequence of actions and resources allocation. Companies can tap some paradigms to analyze the fundamentals of strategy before setting goals and delineating a strategic path.

 

Four core questions are to be answered: What are you capable of doing? What can you do? What do you want to do? And what should you do? Respectively, they concern internal analysis, external analysis, core values, and social responsibility. Strategy is where these four aspects share the largest intersection.

 

Strategy is subject to different interpretations, and Prof. Xie quoted the 5P theory of Henry Mintzberg, namely Perspective, Plan, Pattern, Position, and Ploy. She also elucidated the four key features of strategy summed up by Prof. Ma Hao, also of the NSD, in his book Strategic Management. Besides being goal-oriented and long term-natured, strategic decisions tend to involve large-scale and irrevocable commitment of resource as well as interaction with competitors. And it’s critical to understand that competitors might come out of nowhere. A winning strategy, as Garmin the GPS-based product maker has demonstrated, is to sharpen one’s specialization and use defense as the best offense.

 

Market competition can be in various forms and some are cut-throat. A way out is for competitors to cooperate, as evidenced by what Didi and Kuaidi did when Uber entered the Chinese market. Moreover, companies tend to neglect the power of time and overestimate their core competitiveness without acknowledging the advantage of riding on the fast train of the Chinese economy. As the growth slows down, many companies are having a hard time adjusting.

 

Change and strategy are neutral. Companies with strategic thinking can unlock the opportunities in this age. They are advised to combine external and internal advantages, align strategy and actions to zoom in on strategic areas and discard the rest, and bring about new advantages through unique perspectives and innovative thinking.