Crafting & Executing Strategy: The Quest for Competitive Advantage: Concepts and Cases 23th edition

89)    A typical company strategy consists of both deliberate and/or planned initiatives that have proven themselves in the marketplace and newly launched initiatives aimed at further boosting performance, and emergent and/or reactive adjustments to unanticipated strategic moves by rivals, unexpected changes in customer preferences, and new market opportunities.

 

90)    A company's strategy is shaped partly by management analysis and choice and partly by the necessity of adapting and learning by doing. Depending on market factors, internal changes, and changing customer needs, a mix of both proactive and reactive strategies is important to implement to achieve a company's realized strategy. Managers must always be willing to supplement or modify the proactive strategy elements with as-needed reactions to unanticipated conditions. Inevitably, there will be occasions when market and competitive conditions take an unexpected turn that calls for some kind of strategic reaction.

 

91)    A company's strategy tends to evolve because of changing circumstances and ongoing efforts by management to improve the strategy. Planned initiatives to improve the company's financial performance and secure a competitive edge are implemented in sync with reactive strategies because market conditions and customer preferences change from time to time. Changing circumstances and ongoing management efforts to improve the strategy cause a company's strategy to evolve over time—a condition that makes the task of crafting strategy a work in progress, not a one-time event. Factors that mostly lead to change in strategies are fresh strategic maneuvers on the part of rival firms, unexpected shifts in customer requirements, fast-changing technological developments, and so on.

 

92)    At the core of every sound strategy is the company's business model. The two elements of a company's business model are (1) its customer value proposition and (2) its profit formula. The customer value proposition lays out the company's approach to satisfying buyer wants and needs at a price that customers will consider a good value. The profit formula describes the company's approach to determining a cost structure that will allow for acceptable profits, given the pricing tied to its customer value proposition.

 

93)    To determine a winning strategy, a company needs to ensure the strategy is well matched to industry and competitive conditions, a company's best market opportunities, and other pertinent aspects of the business environment in which the company operates; it should enable a company to achieve a competitive advantage over key rivals that is long-lasting; finally, the mark of a winning strategy is strong company performance. Two kinds of performance indicators tell the most about the caliber of a company's strategy: (1) competitive strength and market standing and (2) profitability and financial strength.

 

94)    The mark of a winning strategy is strong company performance. Two kinds of performance indicators tell the most about the caliber of a company's strategy: (1) competitive strength and market standing and (2) profitability and financial strength. Above-average financial performance or gains in market share, competitive position, or profitability are signs of a winning strategy.

 

95)    Strategies that fail to achieve a durable competitive advantage over rivals are unlikely to produce superior performance for more than a brief period of time. Winning strategies enable a company to achieve a competitive advantage over key rivals that is long-lasting. The bigger and more durable the competitive advantage, the more powerful it is.

 

96)    Crafting and executing strategy are core management functions. Among all the things managers do, nothing affects a company's ultimate success or failure more fundamentally than how well its management team charts the company's direction, develops competitively effective strategic moves and business approaches, and pursues what needs to be done internally to produce good day-in, day-out strategy execution and operating excellence.

 

97)    This is false. Crafting and executing strategy are core management functions. Among all the things managers do, nothing affects a company's ultimate success or failure more fundamentally than how well its management team charts the company's direction, develops competitively effective strategic moves and business approaches, and pursues what needs to be done internally to produce good day-in, day-out strategy execution and operating excellence. Instead, good strategy and good strategy execution taken together are the most telling signs of good management.