Value-based Strategy
What Strategy is all about is, in a word, ‘competitive advantage’.
The sole purpose of strategic planning is to enable a company
to efficiently gain a sustainable edge over its competitors
KENICHI OHMAE
The essential element of successful strategy is that,
it derives success from the differences between
competitors with a consequent
difference
in their behavior.
BRUCE HENDERSON
The first responsibility of top management is to ask the question: ‘what is our business?’ and to make sure it is
carefully studied and correctly answered.
PETER DRUCKER
Performance difference is not the rule in all industries and sometimes, although differences may exist, they are often short lived. Nevertheless some firms, in many different industries, in many different countries and contexts, are doing better than others.
The concept of competitive advantage has taken centre stage in business strategy and scholars are seeking to identify and delineate the factors that explain performance differences.
Practitioners, for their part, not only seek to understand the origins of outperformance but try also to find ways to maximise the performance of their organisation. Indeed they are not interested in making predictions only, but also seek to make prescriptions.
The central research research question for strategic management is to understand “why do some firms persistently outperform others” [Barney07].
As stressed by W. Pietersen « Competitive advantage is one of those buzz phrase that has become a substitute for thought » ( [Pietersen] )
This section aims at exploring some of the most fundamental aspects of over-performance, starting with how strategists define ‘Value’ .
