This article provides a new model of thought to strategy because it goes against the grain in saying the instead of having a specific strategy that a company should follow to the T, it suggests that one keep a few strategies open and allow yourself to adapt to circumstances and have though dictate the strategy you will use.
This article was for the most part, clear to understand. It also seemed to flow from various topics in the article smoothly. The author ties to convince with an intuitive approach. This article focuses on the process of strategy. It also seems conceptual and practical. This article uses the following companies as examples: Comdex, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Sun Microsystems, AT&T, Xerox, Hewlett-Packard, Digital Equipment Corporation, Apollo, Siemens Nixdorf, Santa Fe Institute and the Bios Group, Proctor & Gamble, Merck, McKinsey & Company, Bombardier, Global Express, General Electric, and Thermo-Electron.
Strategy can be defined as: “Robust, adaptive strategies willingly sacrifice the focus, apparent certainty, efficiency, and coordination that traditional strategies provide for the sake of flexibility and a higher probability of success.” The essence of strategy is “Managers can form population strategies by using lessons learned from complexity theory and evolution.”
The three most important points on this article are: a robust population of strategies will produce positive results under wide variety of circumstances. An adaptive population of strategies keeps an array of options open over time, minimizing long-term and irreversible commitments. They sacrifice focus, apparent certainty, efficiency, and coordination that traditional strategies provide for the sake of flexibility and higher probability of success
The author has made many great points to support his case. His structure, his examples, and his straight forward nature make everything he says believable.
We did not have any questions that arose when reading this article. A single quote that captured this article is “We should take cue from nature and change the way we develop business strategy, relying less on our ability to make accurate predictions and more power of evolution.” This article has a little ring of truth to it. From this article we have concluded that you have to build and manage your strategies to be successful.
This article relates to the Core Competence of the Corporation in the sense that they both show to be diverse and be set apart from competition in their industry. Any company could benefit from having a long term, robust, adaptive strategy. Any company that thinks that they can make a plan and follow it to their success is sadly mistaken. If the environment never changed than a one-time plan may work, but the reality is that things are always changing, and the success of a company can almost be measured on how well they can keep up with it.
Outline
I. Unreliable minds in an unpredictable world
II. Robust and adaptive strategies
a. A robust population of strategies will produce positive results under wide variety of circumstances
b. An adaptive population of strategies keeps an array of options open over time, minimizing long-term and irreversible commitments
c. They sacrifice focus, apparent certainty, efficiency, and coordination that traditional strategies provide for the sake of flexibility and higher probability of success
III. Strategy as evolutionary search
a. Fitness landscape
i. Low fitness
ii. High fitness
b. Deploy platoons of hikers
i. Single search
ii. Parallel search
c. Mix short and long jumps
i. Short jumps only
ii. Long jumps only
iii. Mix short and long jumps
d. 3 Horizons
i. Horizon 1 – defend and extend current businesses
ii. Horizon 2 – drive growth in emerging new businesses
iii. Horizon 3 – seed options for future growth businesses
e. Building and managing a population of strategies
i. Create
1. Invest in diversity
2. Value strategies
ii. Cultivate (evolving populations of strategies)
1. Map the mix
2. Test the population
iii. Commit
1. Bring the market inside
2. Use venture capital performance metrics