strategy is about creating situations that allow organizations to be victorious or, in other words, successful. (Location 116)
To be successful, an organization must be able to create some kind of sustainable competitive advantage. The (Location 117)
Moreover, strategic plans tend to be limited in scope and only present the tip of the iceberg in terms of what strategic activities the organization is engaging (Location 124)
An important caveat here, however, is that even the best implementation will not lead to success unless the strategy that the implementation is driving toward is properly aligned with the organization’s desired destination. (Location 131)
As a result, competition has amplified to the point where organizations must differentiate themselves not only on the basis of what they do, but also how they do it. (Location 145)
In the current market space, however, a first-mover position no longer guarantees success. (Location 158)
a strategy is a plan that creates sustainable competitive advantage and allows an organization to perform over time, even in the face of a changing environment. (Location 174)
“The essence of formulating a competitive strategy is relating a company to its environment” (Location 212)
Porter’s Five Forces model is intended to define the state of competition in a given industry. (Location 229)
there is evidence that making movements based solely upon the actions of opponents can be unwise (Location 305)
Core competencies, according to Hamel and Prahalad, are a bundle of skills and technologies that enable the organization to provide a particular benefit to its customers (1994). In other words, those differentiating capabilities that make the organization who and what it is. (Location 326)
Evidence is mounting that it is the intangible assets, such as customer relationships, that are making the difference in the performance of organizations. (Location 391)
Approaches like this can be implemented by using the right customer segmentation model to understand how to slice and dice an organization’s market. (Location 449)
Both systems thinking approaches are alternatives to the more common reductionist methodologies that break concepts into smaller and smaller components for the sake of analysis and understanding, (Location 479)
The goal of systems thinking is to understand interrelationships and patterns, rather than just snapshots and static single points of data. (Location 489)
First, all organizations must consider the external (i.e., competitive) environment when formulating and executing their strategies. (Location 498)
already been established that the ability to develop and leverage capabilities is a key differentiator in an organization’s success. (Location 571)
Integrating capabilities-based information into strategic planning processes can be challenging. (Location 577)
In addition, developing capabilities can be both costly and time-consuming. (Location 579)
Organizations must seriously contemplate the strategic value of the capabilities they want to evolve into core competencies before making investment decisions. (Location 583)
Capabilities Selection: Deciding what the organization is (and is not) going to do •  Execution Approach: Deciding how the selected capabilities will be leveraged •  Rationale: The business justification for selecting those capabilities and the method of execution over other options (Location 586)
This is when the organization decides what it is (or is not) going to do. This is often one of the most difficult parts of the process. It requires the organization to take a hard look at itself and decide what resources it will invest. (Location 596)
Needs Alignment: Developing a deep understanding of customer and market needs, and then aligning the organization’s capabilities to be able to meet those needs in a (Location 601)
options •  Service Differentiation: Driving toward capabilities that meet the needs of a specific market segment, even at the risk of losing market share in other segments to whom those capabilities or delivery models may be less appealing •  Strengths: Developing a detailed understanding of the organization’s particular strengths and weaknesses, and then looking for places in the market to apply those strengths. Also includes looking for ways to build upon existing strengths (Location 603)
Despite the popularity of the intuitive synthesis approach described in chapter 6, trusting one’s gut is not sufficient when millions of dollars are at risk. (Location 636)
Once the capabilities that will be developed into core competencies are selected and the rationale for taking those approaches is documented, the organization has established the what of the capabilities portion of its strategy. (Location 668)
If an organization does not take all of these into account, the risk of strategic misalignment becomes extremely high. (Location 682)
may be this limitation of their strategic thinking to this one area and a corresponding lack of consideration for other critical inputs (i.e., capabilities and customers). (Location 876)
There is also evidence that capabilities, customers, and the competitive environment are the primary categorizations of data that should be used. (Location 1270)