Critical review of Crafting Strategy Essay

Edmundson (2013) explains that companies that consistently expand in a profitable manner have learned to take their strength and transform them into a competitive advantage. Edmundson (2013) list nine principals that will help companies turn their strengths into competitive advantages. The nine principals are to be quantifiable, stay objective and creditable, be true and accurate, not stated by you’re competition, contrast, use concrete facts and tangible data, emotional, focused and simple, and tell stories to make your audience relate. Edmundson (2013) continues that typically companies that have

It will then assess the strengths and weaknesses of the viewpoints presented in this article. And lastly, author’s personal thoughts on strategy will be terminated alongside the conclusion of the entire essay.

For this paper, I am going to define strategy using Joint Pub 3.0’s definition: A prudent idea or set of ideas for employing the instruments of power in a synchronized and integrated fashion to achieve theater, national, and/or multi-national objectives. Using this definition of strategy, I’ll argue that Nightingale makes a valid claim when he states that the US is weak in formulating strategy by highlighting several aspects of strategic development where the US needs improvement. Nonetheless, let the record show that America’s success rate in conflicts in the last century is mixed, laying claim that the US may not be great at strategy development, however, it has done well enough to defeat some pretty ruthless villains ie., Hitler, Saddam, Milosevic, and Bin

Organizations pursuing this type of business strategy try to develop a competitive advantage based on product innovation. The strategy requires employees to continually develop new products and services to create an organization’s advantage in the market. These companies create and maintain an environment that encourages employees to bring new ideas into the company.

Introduction ............................................................................................. 2 Wider Debate Of Strategy .................................................................. 2 Placing The Article In The Wider Debate.................................... 4 Strengths & Weaknesses of the article......................................... 4 Conclusion................................................................................................. 6 References................................................................................................. 7

9. What’s the flaw of accepting the notion of “ceteris paribus” when analyzing a strategy?

To survive and thrive, an organization must create a competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is a product or service that an organization’s customers place a greater value on than similar offerings from a competitor. Unfortunately, competitive advantages are typically temporary because competitors often seek ways to duplicate the competitive advantage. In turn, organizations must develop a strategy based on a new competitive advantage.

In today’s political environment, strategic options effect policy. This is not always the case but recently with military conflict areas, it has been. Understanding our authorities allow

a strategy, but one of the external factors could negate its best efforts to implement the strategy.”

Custom Molds, Inc. was founded by a father and son team in 1987 to provide high quality, custom-designed molds for manufacturers of electronic connectors, but later expanded into the production of plastic parts for the industry. In recent years, the changing environment of the electronics industry had a profound impact on the way Custom Molds conducts its business and manufacturing processes. The changing sales mix, coupled with delivery and quality problems, prompted the company to revise its business strategies to address to following issues:

In the book “Good Strategy and Bad Strategy”, Richard Rumelt illustrates examples of success and failure of business management to explain the true meaning of the strategy, and tells companies how to develop a correct strategy and adhere to core of management strategy. He also emphasizes the central role of strategic management as to remind the readers to understand the huge difference between a good strategy and bad strategy. This book has three sections: good and bad strategy, sources of power, and thinking like a strategist. I will be evaluating strengths and weaknesses under these topics. After finish reading the book, I had gained a better understanding of what a good strategy means to the success of a company. According to Rumelt, a good strategy is coherent, where companies pursue multiple objectives that are connected with each other. Rumelt points out that a good strategy consists of three elements: diagnosis, guiding policy, and coherent action. (71) First, diagnosis means to define the obstacles and challenges that the companies are facing, and guidelines help the people to overcome the obstacles. Lastly, coherent action is the activities or actions that company did to be consistent with its guiding policy. Today, many of us lost the focus of the strategy, which results in the downward of businesses and organizations. Rumelt has defined the strategy as acknowledging the main problems and take coherent action to overcome the problems. Moreover, he illustrates

‘Strategic Management’ is a very complex term as many eminent researchers and scholars have had different views and conclusions on strategy. According to White (2004), “Strategic Management involves both systematically developing an idea together with its implications and testing the empirical validity & usefulness of that idea against the real world.” Thus strategy is not only about planning for future but also about confirming the validity of the hypothesis considered and implementing it successfully. Strategy formation may take various forms such as implicit, explicit or emergent. Implicit strategy is a strategy formed by intuitions of an individual. As per implicit strategists, strategic management is about reading the environment

Competitive advantage is explained by Mahoney and Pandian (1992) as the function of industry analysis, organizational governance and the firm’s effects in the form of resource advantages and strategies. In order for a firm to be competitive it must adapt to the volatile business environment and through strategic management decisions establish a competitive advantage that will ultimately produce superior performance relative to its competitors (Akimova 2000).

Financial objectives relate to the financial performance targets management has established for the organization to achieve. Strategic objectives relate to target outcomes that indicate a company is strengthening its market standing, competitive vitality, and future business prospects.

Innovation offers the companies a competitive advantage. Presently and within the future, more than any time in history, the key to competitive advantage is innovation. However innovation will facilitate businesses meet all of their strategic challenges, not simply competition; to illustrate, in confronting accelerating rates of change, globalization, apace advancing technology, a additional numerous workforce, associated a modification from an industrial to a knowledge-based economy. Meeting all of those challenges helps the firm attain competitiveness, and meeting these challenges suitably depends on innovation. Innovation allows a firm to workout its challenges in distinctive ways in which build competitive advantage either through relative differentiation, a relative low-priced position, or few acceptable level of each. Innovation cannot assure success, however success cannot be achieved within the end of the day without it.