Methods of Formulating Strategies

Abstract

We have seen in the last chapter what a strategy is. In the chapters to follow we shall consider strategic forecasting and the management of strategic databases. In this one we are concerned with devising a procedure for formulating strategy. The modern corporation, especially the larger ones, cannot normally adopt the free-ranging opportunistic style. There is inevitably a degree of inertia which comes with size and with success. It would be very easy for a firm to adopt the null strategy which we discussed in Chapter 12. Nonetheless, almost every top manager would agree that his company would not pursue the null strategy. He would say that its adoption would lead in the medium-to-long term to a moribund company, to which he would have no desire to remain affiliated. But how does a company set about a job of formulating new strategies? What machinery must it set up?