Business
Strategy Explained, How to
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Create a Strategy for Your Business
(https://strategyforexecs.co
Creating a wining business strategy from scratch by Sun Wu.
What is a Business Strategy?
Business strategy is a compendium of deliberate choices that an organization makes to
maximize its value over a given period of time.
The 10 Rules of Business Strategy
The ten immutable rules of business strategy for executives.
Maximizing the value of an organization implies that as a business executive you must manage
your strategies to extract the most you can from the strategic resources at your disposal.
Those strategic resources include money, people, knowledge, assets, relationships, intellectual
property or any other factor that can be levered to increase an organization’s value.
Those efforts, however, have to be strategic, meaning that they must be well-thought and
deliberate.
In an interview with Joan Magretta, strategy guru Michael Porter
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Porter) argued that while most executives think they
have a business strategy, they really don’t.
We, however, think differently. In our view, a business always ends up having a strategy even if
they don’t intentionally plan for it.
The thing is, that a good, deliberate strategy is more likely to get the results you want than an
“emerging” one.
In the end, if you don’t know where you want to go, you will most likely end up somewhere else,
and it is not different when it comes to a business and its strategy.
Having a good understanding of your goals is critical for the success of your business strategy
This article provides you with an updated take on what a business strategy means for you as a
business executive in today’s hyper-competitive markets and how to create one for your
organization based on our extensive research (https://strategyforexecs.com/strategy-research/)
of the subject, with examples, charts, videos, and downloadable tools.
Here’s what we will cover:
1. Explaining ‘Business Strategy’
2. Corporate Strategy versus ‘Business-level Strategy’
3. Ten Immutable Laws of Modern Business Strategy
4. Types of Business Strategy
5. Strategic Positioning
6. Differentiation Strategy
7. Price Leadership Strategy
8. Business Growth Strategies
9. Innovation as Part of your Business Strategy
10. Business Strategy Template: A map to strategic choices
11. Business Strategy Examples
12. Best Strategy Books
13. References
The content of this article is based on Sun Wu’s best-selling book Strategy for Executives™
which you can now download for free here (https://strategyforexecs.com/download/). Now let’s
dive in.
Explaining Business Strategy
Classic strategy thinkers in the 1980s and 1990s defined the goal of strategy as “to outperform
competitors within a given market”, which derives from the idea that companies compete with
others at the “share” level, and that to win they must outperform rivals on the basis of their
“Return on Investment” (ROI) for shareholders.
While the idea captures the essence of a competitive strategy and the strategic thinking taught
during the last 40 years (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_planning), it doesn’t reflect the
nature of today’s markets, and what a modern organization needs to thrive and last in today’s
hypercompetitive dynamics.
First, by defining your strategic goals in terms of your competitors’ strategy and performance,
you are most likely leaving money on the table.
In fact, focusing your attention on your competitors’ behavior may prevent you from realizing
other potential sources of value for your company producing a shortsighted strategy.
You wouldn’t believe for example that Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos
(https://strategyforexecs.com/jeff-bezos-amazon/) wakes up every day thinking that he doesn’t
need a strategy for his businesses just because his company already outperforms Walmart and
Barnes & Noble in eCommerce and books respectively.
Here’s what Bezos himself thinks about setting your strategic goals based on competitors’
behavior: “Let’s say you’re the leader in a particular arena, if you’re competitor-focused and
you’re already the leader, then where does your energy come from?”
Measuring the success of your business’s strategy in terms of your competitor’s performance
provides a shortsighted vision.
Defining strategy in terms of other companies’ strategies is just not ambitious, nor specific
enough.
What if all of your competitors suck or are having a rough year? Would you be happy just
because your strategy helped you outperform a poor-performing business?
Jeff Bezos and Amazon already left all competitors in the dust a while back and his company
already hit a trillion-dollar market valuation, yet he keeps growing it and improving its strategy
as fast as he can.
Because that’s the goal of his strategy: “to maximize Amazon’s value within the foreseeable
future“, and not something based on his competitors’ strategy like “outperform our competitors“.
Your job as a business executive is to maximize what you can do with the strategic resources you
have at hand, and to do that, you need to consider all the alternatives available and select the
ones that you believe will increase the organization’s value the most for the least amount of
effort.
Second, the classic strategy definition by default limits the scope of operation of your company
to the confines of a “market (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_(economics))”, once again
producing a shortsighted strategy for your business.
If your goal is to be the best company in your market, then by definition you would only try to
make money within the boundaries of that market, advice that doesn’t reflect the reality of
today’s market dynamic where companies are more often deploying strategies to cross the
boundaries of their original industry looking for greener pastures.
If companies were to stay within their markets, Google wouldn’t compete outside internet
search, nor would Amazon compete other than in eCommerce.
They would just focused their strategies to the things that they are best at.
Business strategy questions that you should be
asking
Instead of benchmarking your strategic performance against competitors, the questions that
you should be asking yourself are:
Are we doing everything we can to maximize our company’s wealth over the foreseeable future?
Are we doing the “right” things?
Are our businesses in the right market position?
Are we pursuing the right “strategic” growth opportunities?
Are there other ways to grow?
As long as you are shooting to get the best return from your resources, the question of whether
you end up over- or under-performing against competitors, or if your profits come from markets
that are close or away from your core, becomes irrelevant to your strategy.
See Understanding Business Strategy (https://strategyforexecs.com/understanding-businessstrategy/) for a more comprehensive view of this subject.
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Corporate Strategy vs Business-level Strategy
In a company that owns a single business unit the goal of its strategy is fairly straightforward: to
maximize the business’s valuation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_valuation) over the
foreseeable future.
But when we try to apply that definition to a company that owns multiple business units, the
boundaries of its strategy may no longer be clear.
While the difference between a “corporate strategy (https://strategyforexecs.com/corporate-
strategy/)” and a “business-level strategy (https://strategyforexecs.com/business-levelstrategy/)” may seem evident and to some extent trivial, keeping a clear distinction between the
two is necessary for a good understanding of your strategy. Let’s explain.
To start, most of the concepts typically associated with strategy such as competition, market
forces, and disruption usually refer to the strategy of a particular product or business unit.
But when we talk about a “corporate strategy”, we are referring to a set of guidelines that
govern the behavior of a company that owns more than a single business unit.
While each unit must have its own strategy set at the business level, to take into account the
particularities of its market and incumbents, a Corporate Strategy
(https://strategyforexecs.com/corporate-strategy/) must still be set at the “mothership” level to
guide the general behavior of the corporation as a whole and of each of its business units.
Take Florida-based NextEra Energy (http://www.nexteraenergy.com/) (NYSE: NEE), an American
power company that serves markets in the US and Canada.
The company has several subsidiaries, among them: NextEra Energy Resources
(http://www.nexteraenergyresources.com/) (NEER), a power generation business; Florida
Power and Light (https://www.fpl.com/about/company-profile.html) (FPL), a power utility
company; NextEra Energy Partners (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NextEra_Energy_Partners)
(NYSE: NEP), a publicly traded company that owns and operates wind and solar projects in the
US; NextEra Energy Transmission (http://www.nexteraenergytransmission.com/) (NEET), a
company that builds and operates power transmission assets in the US; and NextEra Energy
Services (https://www.nexteraenergyservices.com/) (NEES), an electricity retailer serving
residential and commercial customers across the US. All are under control of NextEra Energy
Capital Holdings (https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?
privcapId=3152359) (NECH) with the exception of FPL.
Corporate strategy vs business-level strategy at NextEra energy. While each individual unit has
its own business strategy, they are all guided by the corporate strategy set atop.
Each of these subsidiaries is treated by NextEra Energy as an individual business unit, and
because they operate in different markets each must set its own business strategy, under the
guidance of the general corporate strategy set at the top.
Why having a corporate strategy is so important?
In a multi-business corporation such as NextEra, its executives will seek to maximize its value as
a whole, even if that means sacrificing some of its business units to favor others that are more
promising or strategic.
For example, at a given point in time, their strategy may suggests that it is better to reinvest
profits from a strong business, that happens to be in a dying industry, onto a weak unit that’s
getting traction in a fast-growing market, rather than trying to protect the market position of
the dying business.
Because the goal of its business strategy is the maximization of the organization’s value as a
whole, its executives must sometimes pursue this type of cross-business optimization, even if
that means achieving suboptimal results in a particular business unit.
Think about corporate strategy as a general set of rules that seeks to maximize profitability at
the corporate level by running individual “business units” which operate within particular
markets.
Because each market is different, each unit needs its own “business strategy”.
From that idea we can also see how a “business” strategy must be designed to co-exist with the
“corporate” strategy set at the top.
Jack Welch: My Greatest Leadership Learnings From a Life in Business
Jack Welch explains the fundamentals of a winning business strategy, based on his extensive
experience as an executive and later CEO of General Electric.
Other examples may be more familiar to the you. Amazon.com, for example, runs its massive
eCommerce platform as a standalone business, while owning other individual strategic
businesses like Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud computing business; Zappos, an online
shoe and clothing retailer; and Whole Foods Market, a brick-and-mortar supermarket chain that
specializes in healthy food.
Each of these three divisions operates in different markets and faces different threats, so their
strategy has to be set at their business level, but under Amazon.com’s corporate strategy
guidance.
From these definitions, it is clear then that what gets disrupted or become obsolete are
“products”, not companies.
But because many strategies rely only on a particular product, when that product gets disrupted
the “business” goes with it.
From this, we can conclude that to really extract the most from your company’s resources, you
must adopt some kind of portfolio approach to how you manage the strategy of your business
units and allocate resources strategically, a subject that we cover extensively in our book.
(https://strategyforexecs.com/download/)
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Ten Immutable Principles of Modern ‘Business
Strategy’
The fundamental concepts of business strategy
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_planning) haven’t changed much over the last few
decades. What has been taught in business schools since the early 1980s are still the pillars that
support most of today’s strategy frameworks.
But rather than having changed, our knowledge of strategy has “evolved” significantly now that
we’ve had the opportunity to experience longer periods of competition and to observe the rise
and fall, sometimes miserably, of companies and businesses once regarded as the most
innovative like Sears, Circuit City, Toys R Us, Radio Shack, Blockbuster, Pets.com and Borders
Books.
One of the most important contributions of our research, is that through it we have been able to
rewrite classic principles of business strategy, providing a long-deserved update.
We start with the premise that to be successful, there are only two things that a CEO must do
well: protect earnings from operating business and maximize earnings’ growth over the
foreseeable future.
That combination of defend-and-grow is what builds up an organization’s value over time.
Maximizing shareholders’ value takes a combination of initiatives to both defend and grow core
earnings. That combination is what grows a company’s valuation over time, and is at the core of
modern business strategy.
If during a given period a CEO does nothing else but to protect the company’s earnings from
erosion and grow those earnings at the level or even higher than other high-performing
companies (not only industry competitors), most people (especially shareholders) would agree
that the CEO has done a great job and that the business’s strategy has been successful.
Second, let us remind you that the profit formula only has three components: Price, Demand
and Costs, and that consequently, a good strategy is one that either helps us sustain premium
prices or superior levels of demand, or one that help us lower unit costs.
A business decision that doesn’t help you achieve either of those two goals should not be
considered being part of your business’s strategy.
Ten basic rules of a winning business strategy
Based on these premises, we combined more than 40 years of research, including our own
(https://strategyforexecs.com/strategy-research/), to come up with ten fundamental rules that
must support the strategy of any of your businesses:
1. The aim of any business, hence the goal of its strategy, is to find a market position that is
both profitable and defendable in its markets of choice.
2. A market position that is both profitable and defendable can only be achieved through
differentiated products or lower relative costs, that is, by either doing different things
from competitors or doing the same things in different ways.
3. A differentiation strategy should translate into higher prices, higher demand or both.
Lower costs on the other hand, should translate into lower prices, higher margins or both.
4. To defend its market position, a business must deliver its Value Proposition
(https://strategyforexecs.com/value-proposition/) at a lower cost than anyone else.
5. What erodes a business’s ability to remain profitable is commoditization
(https://strategyforexecs.com/strategy-commoditization/), not competition.
Commoditization can happen to a product’s particular set of benefits and features, or to
the ways in which those benefits and features are created.
6. Because the process that leads to commoditization is systematic in nature, a profitable
market position is only defendable on a temporary basis, making strategy a process that
must continually readjust itself.
7. Although profits eventually lead to cash, the value of a business, and therefore the success
of a strategy, must ultimately be measured through cash, not profit.
8. A business should persistently look for ways to reduce costs even if its strategy is not
based on low prices. Conversely, it should always look for ways to increase revenues, even
if its strategy is not based on differentiation.
9. The design of an organization must fit its strategy, not the other way around. This
necessarily means that a change in strategy must drive a change in the design of the
organization.
10. A strategy can only deliver its benefits if it is well implemented. Therefore, an integral part
of the strategy must be a “system” to ensure its systematic execution.
Take these as the ten immutable commandments of a business strategy, and those who violate
any of them will see how their business loses profitability over time.
On the growth front, business expansions and innovations are the only two strategies to grow
organically, and as you will see later we identify seven different strategic paths you can use to
pursue growth in your organization.
From these principles, we can conclude that to be a success your company’s strategy must cover
three areas. It must have:
1. A strategy to protect your operating businesses
2. A strategy to maximize business growth over time, and
3. A strategy to ensure that 1 and 2 happen.
Those are the principles upon which our business strategy framework is developed throughout
the rest of this article. But first, let’s review the different types of strategies that we deduce
from these principles.
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Types of Business Strategies
Based on the three plans (i.e. strategies) we described above, we can deduce a few “types” of
business strategies that you must have in place in order to achieve your organization’s longterm goals.
For example, to protect your operating businesses, you only have two competing choices to pick
from: a differentiation strategy or a low price strategy.
Sometimes leaders get so focused on competition that don’t realize that what really drives
profitability down is commoditization and not competition per se. That’s why a good business
strategy is one that fights and prevents the commoditization of your products.
That means that the only way your businesses can achieve a market position that is both
profitable and defendable is by offering products and services that are different from
competitors’, or that are offered at a lower price. We explain both strategies further shortly.
When it comes to your growth plan, on the other hand, there are only two types of strategies
you can pursue: expansions or innovation.
Business expansion refers to finding ways to do more of what your company is already doing,
while innovation covers the identification of “new” sources of earnings which.
Let’s tackle each strategy briefly.
Protecting your core business with a competitive
strategy
Protecting a core business means that you must find a sustainable market position for your
business where you can create (and protect) superior profitability, but from the strategy
principles we reviewed earlier, we know the only way to defend a profitable position is through
differentiation, lower prices or a combination of both.
Differentiation means offering products and services that are in some way unique AND valuable
to target consumers when compared to similar solutions.
Differentiation is very important for strategy because it helps influence two variables of the
profit formula: price and demand.
Products that are perceived as valuable and unique can command higher prices or drive higher
levels of demand than other comparable solutions.
Another way to increase a business’s level of demand is through lower prices. If you price
products below comparable solutions, buyers will be more motivated to pay for them.
A low-price strategy, or “price leadership” as many refer to it, requires a stricter cost discipline
and a different approach to customer value than a differentiation strategy.
Crafting a growth strategy for your business
A growth strategy (https://strategyforexecs.com/growth-strategy/) seeks to find ways to
increase a company’s earnings over the foreseeable future, and as we saw before there are two
ways to do it: through business expansion or through innovation.
There are many ways to pursue growth in your strategy as we will see later, but they all fall
under these two major types, and as a business executive it is your responsibility to pick the
initiatives you believe will have the most impact on your company’s performance.
We cover these four types of strategy (Differentiation, Low Price, Expansions, and Innovation) in
more detail later in this article.
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Strategic Positioning: What a good business
strategy always begins with
The first line of business for any established company, hence the priority of the business’s
strategy, is to protect profits from its core businesses.
Before thinking about launching new products, growth or the latest management trend, what
you must have is a solid strategy to protect the profits from your operating businesses and you
must fight, bite and scratch if necessary to protect that core source of value.
Protecting core businesses means finding a sustainable position in the market for each of them
where they can create and defend superior profitability.
We explained earlier that to establish a market position that is both profitable and defendable a
business’s strategy must continually challenge the commoditization of its products and services.
That means that it must either perform different activities from its rivals or perform the same
activities in different ways.
Finding and retaining a profitable market positioning
Strategic Positioning is the concept that best tackles this challenge as it entails making choices
about both the kind of value that your products and services will offer and how that value will be
created.
These choices are reflected through two main concepts:
1. The customer’s Value Propositions: The decisions a business makes about the benefits and
features its products will offer, the customers they will target with those products, and the
price at which those products will be offered to those target customers.
2. The business’s Value Chain: The decisions a business makes about how it organizes and
manages all the activities involved in delivering a Value Proposition.
The more difficult it is to copy a company’s Value Proposition
(https://strategyforexecs.com/value-proposition/) or its Value Chain
(https://strategyforexecs.com/value-chain/), the more defendable its market position (and the
more successful the strategy of the business) will be.
Why good value propositions must be at the core
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of your business’s strategy
As professor and strategy guru Michael Porter likes to say: “A Value Proposition that can be
effectively delivered without a tailored Value Chain will not produce a sustainable competitive
edge.”
Strategy guru Michael Porter has always been a supported of the idea that good business
strategies must always begin with a differentiated value proposition.
Unless your company offers products and services that are both unique AND valuable to target
consumers, or are to some extent difficult to copy, your position in the market could be
vulnerable to the attack of companies with similar capabilities and well-funded copycats.
What is a value proposition?
Strategic positioning: A value proposition reflects choices a company makes about product,
customers, and price and is at the core of any good business strategy.
A differentiated Value Proposition and a distinctive Value Chain, therefore, are the only means
that you have as a business executive to defend a profitable market position.
Both concepts are well tied up in the Strategic Positioning of the business.
The challenge that you will face in trying to strategically position your business is in finding the
profitable market positioning that can sustain and protect during the foreseeable future.
Target, the department store chain, knows Walmart’s strategy in the same way that any
furniture vendor knows Ikea’s strategy, yet they all have managed to find a position in their
respective markets where they are profitable and difficult to challenge or imitate.
The strategic positioning of a business therefore is not a single event but an iterative process
that monitors your business’s performance and continually adjusts direction based on measured
changes in the market.
For a deeper analysis of this subject, see our Strategic Positioning
(https://strategyforexecs.com/strategic-positioning/) section.
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Differentiation Strategy
A differentiation strategy is a business’s effort to create products and services that are
perceived by target customers as being different from other solutions that do a similar job.
Differentiation doesn’t really mean offering higher or lower value, but just offering a different
kind of value.
How to Differentiate your Products and Services
Differentiation strategy: The four levers of differentiation
Before we move on, notice that what drives positioning and willingness to pay
(https://strategyforexecs.com/willingness-to-pay/) is the perception of value, and not whether
or not that value is real, which means that even though companies try to differentiate products
in their respective markets, the place where product differentiation really happens is in the
minds of your target customers.
That’s where the product really has to win, and where you’ll measure the success of your
business’s strategy.
What is a differentiated value proposition and
how it can help your strategy?
A differentiated Value Proposition creates a particular perception of value in the minds of your
target consumers with respect to other comparable solutions, and that perception is what
ultimately determines how much those customers will be willing to pay to get the benefits of
your products.
And since higher prices can increase profits, as we saw before, then a differentiated value
proposition can be a powerful tool in your business’s strategy.
Customers are usually willing to pay for products that offer a particular kind of value, based on
how common that type of value is found in other solutions, but if the same benefits and features
are found everywhere, they will be more inclined to make a price-based decision and just select
the cheapest option.
Products that are both unique and valuable have a higher chance of commanding premium
prices or higher levels of demand, while products that are considered as more basic (or less rich
in terms of benefits and features) but priced lower usually have a higher chance of gaining
traction with price-sensitive buyers.
There are however some tradeoffs associated with those decisions since more specialized
products would usually be appealing to a smaller customer segment, while products with lower
price can target larger audiences. Considerations of great importance for your business’s
strategy.
Sometimes less is more when it comes to a
business’s product strategy
In many cases, the key to success is in narrowing down to a particular set of benefits and
features not found in other products which satisfy the particular needs of narrow target
customers and pricing those products accordingly to create enough incentive for those
customers to pay for them.
A good aid to see how products compete with other alternatives in terms of features, cost and
other factors is the “Strategy Canvas (https://strategyforexecs.com/strategy-canvas/)”, a tool
introduced by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their book Blue Ocean Strategy
(https://www.blueoceanstrategy.com/what-is-blue-ocean-strategy/).
A Strategy Canvas is a visual tool that plots the factors upon which incumbent products
compete (therefore the factors they invest in) on the horizontal axis, and the level of value that
buyers receive across the competing factors on the vertical axis.
The strategy canvas is a great tool to explore changes to a product’s value proposition
The idea behind comparing solutions against each other is to identify the factors upon which the
incumbents’ strategies are competing, and come up with ideas for new products (or
improvements to existing ones) that are different from the incumbent solutions.
For example, a company could decide to make a product that only offers the features and
benefits that target customers value the most and eliminate all others factors, helping the
company reduce costs at the same time.
Using perception maps to help strategically
position your business’s offers
For businesses operating in competitive environments, there are also other tools available, like
perception maps (https://strategyforexecs.com/positioning-strategy/) for example, which help
us measure the positioning of a given brand in the minds of target consumers, relative to other
solutions that serve the same market.
By measuring this positioning you can make proper changes in your strategy and adjust your
business direction.
To see how this works, let’s take a look at the indicative perception map shown below, which
presents competing products along two critical dimensions: Market Appeal (Centrality) and
Distinctiveness.
This is an example of a Distinctiveness-Centrality map, and how they can be used to guide your
business’s strategy. The size of the circles in blue could represent sales volume or price. In
general, the more distinctive the brand, the higher the premium it can charge, and the smaller
the approachable market will tend to be. Gray circles in the background indicate the gross of
customers within that quadrant
On this map Centrality relates to the customer segment of the market to which the product is
appealing, going from broad (mainstream) to narrow (niche), while Distinctiveness relates to the
degree to which the brand stands out from others and becomes distinguishable (unique) in the
minds of target consumers.
Ideally, the more differentiated or unique a product or service is, the better the company is
positioned to charge premium prices or create more demand.
However, as we mentioned previously highly distinctive or unique products, especially if highpriced, will usually appeal to a smaller segment of the market that is able to appreciate or
effectively use the extra value.
The broader the target segment the fewer opportunities for a differentiation strategy will exist,
since the products would need to appeal to a bigger audience.
Consequently, these products may have to be priced lower (a low-price strategy) in order to
reach broad markets effectively.
You may use perception maps to help you find a profitable and defendable position based on
your organization’s goals and capabilities, see where your products stand in the consumers’
minds at any time, and who your real competitors are (in consumers’ minds).
Needless to say, differentiation is by nature a relative term, meaning that the movement in a
perception map depends on the efforts that the other players are making.
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Price Leadership Strategy
Despite what many believe, competing as a low-price player doesn’t mean selling a lousy
product. It is actually quite the opposite.
Although it might seem counterintuitive for some, a low-price strategy always must start with a
good product as part of your business strategy.
Our advice is that “When it comes to costs, be cautious, but never be cheap”.
Despite what many believe, a low-price strategy always starts with a good product.
While the success of low-price positioning hinges on keeping all costs below competitors’, low
prices should not be the result of watering down good products, but from focusing on the most
basic needs of price-sensitive buyers.
That’s how your strategy as a low-price competitor can be effective.
A low-price provider avoids extra features and frills that are only valuable to higher-end buyers,
and instead delivers a basic solution that does a job that is just good enough.
Procter & Gamble’s Ivory soap bar, Ikea’s furniture, and JetBlue in the airline industry are all
examples of low-price players.
Their success is not in watering down products but in carrying a basic stripped-down offer,
focusing on the features that price-sensitive buyers need, and making those cheaper than
everybody else.
A second misconception about price-based competition is that low prices mean lower margins.
That’s absolutely not true and low-cost players like Walmart outperform higher-end retailers
with a strategy that makes money through a different business model, in this case higher
inventory velocity (selling the same items more times than competitors within a given period).
Low-price leaders can outperform competitors by strategically changing the profit “formula”. To
do that, they would either have to increase margins per unit (by reducing their costs) or drive
higher levels of demand (i.e. rotate inventory faster)
Successful low-price competitors target customers who are willing to pay less to get a basic
offer, and they do so through super-efficient value chains that keep tight control on costs.
A frugal mentality is key for the success of a lowprice business strategy
When running a low-cost operation every penny counts, from the cost of manufacturing,
packaging, distribution and advertising, to how employees are incentivized and how the
company carefully invests in R&D and customer acquisition.
If your business’s strategy is around competing on low prices, frugality must become your way of
life and something of a religion, and must be well-rewarded throughout your organization.
So you must help translate this low-cost mentality into highly efficient business models
(https://strategyforexecs.com/business-model/) that permeate everything the business does,
and it will become your most valuable asset.
The success of your business’s strategy as a low-price competitor depends on continually
challenging your cost assumptions, sometimes defining your own metrics of quality and
performance, just like Jetblue has done in the budget airline space.
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Business Strategies for Growth
When market analysts and sites like Seeking Alpha (https://seekingalpha.com/) and Fool.com
(https://www.fool.com/investing-news/) talk about a growth strategy in business, most of the
time they refer to revenues (aka the “top line”) during a given period of time, normally a quarter
or a year.
But in our world, when we talk about a growth strategy we exclusively refer to growing Net
Earnings (aka the “Bottom Line”) or Free Cash Flow (https://strategyforexecs.com/financialanalysis/#cash) (aka FCF).
At the end of the day, both Net Earnings and Free Cash flow are better metrics of the
profitability and true health of an organization. See our summary of Selected Financial Topics
(https://strategyforexecs.com/financial-analysis/) if you need a refresh on Financial Statements
and they relate to your business strategy.
Seven Different Paths to Grow
Growth strategies: seven different paths to growth
Not all growth is created equal and many times sales alone don’t tell you the whole story. In
other words, growing your top line (revenues) doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re growing
your bottom line (profits).
For example, a new project that brings in $10 million a year to a small company’s bottom line
might seem like a good opportunity at the outset, but if the company has to commit $500 million
to create that opportunity, then “as an investment” that opportunity doesn’t look that good or
strategic.
That company would most likely be better off by allocating that money to higher-return projects
or initiatives of strategic nature, even if those are outside its core markets. $10 million a year
from a $500 million investment is not the same as $10 million a year from a $50 million
investment.
Of course, that is a simplification that doesn’t take into account the strategic implications of the
investment but it sends a clear message: the cost of a growth effort matters and revenues don’t
tell the whole story.
For that reason, you must always pay careful attention to the costs of your growth strategy
(both financial and non-financial costs) and to how sustainable you expect these efforts to be in
the long run.
Narrowing down your strategic growth options
In an ideal world you’d think that executives would only go after growth initiatives that were
beneficial or strategic for an organization, but we’ve all seen how pressure from demanding
shareholders and investors and misguided incentives can push an organization to pursue growth
at all costs even if doing so destroys value for shareholders and the team’s morale over the long
term.
Those are typical cases of a bad business strategy, perfectly executed.
In general, a growth opportunity makes sense as part of your business’ strategy if a combination
of the following conditions is met:
1. It increases the company’s bottom line over time
2. It produces an attractive return on investment (ROI),
3. It leverages the company’s value chain,
4. It builds a new critical capability, or
5. It improves the business’ strategic positioning.
While a growth strategy can in general be defined as a group of business initiatives aimed at
increasing a company’s bottom line, we prefer to talk about an executive plan for the strategic
growth of a company, which contains the initiatives that the executive team has “handpicked” to
maximize growth (Net Earnings or FCF) within a given time horizon.
But what are the options available to growth a company?
Through our research, we identified seven different strategies to create growth in any business:
1. Market penetration: Selling more of your existing products to your existing consumers or
targeting new consumer “segments” within the same markets.
2. Market development: Selling your existing products into new markets or into new
markets internationally.
3. Product improvement: Improving your products and services serving existing customers
(to reduce churn, more on that later).
4. Product development: Creating new products and services to target existing customers or
to enter new markets (which would qualify as some type of diversification move).
5. Revenue optimization: Increasing revenues through the implementation of alternative
pricing options or new business models on your existing products.
6. Cost optimization: Reducing costs through the optimization of the business’s cost centers,
by streamlining operations, or targeting inefficient uses of cash.
7. Inorganic growth: Leveraging other companies’ assets through synergistic mergers,
acquisitions or strategic alliances
(https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/strategicalliance.asp).
Your job as a company executive is to explore how this list relates to your organization and make
educated decisions about which strategies you believe would deliver the most impact to your
bottom line and make those part of your overall business strategy.
Not all growth activities will have the same impact on your business, and for that reason, you
must narrow down the universe of initiatives that you could pursue from the list above to the
handful that would deliver the most impact within your planning period.
There are seven different ways to create strategic growth in your organization.
That’s why your plan for growth must be “strategic”, meaning that your plan for “strategic
growth” contains the collection of growth activities that you have deliberately selected.
Categorizing your strategic growth options
Consulting firm McKinsey & Company found that organizations that distribute growth efforts
across three strategic buckets (https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-andsales/our-insights/mastering-three-strategies-of-organic-growth): Expansions, Creations (new
businesses) and Optimizations, are best positioned to outperform their market peers over time.
This categorization is also useful to explain strategic growth sources in executive meetings,
where people can see where the growth is really coming from, and can also help you make
resources allocation decisions more intuitively.
According to McKinsey, companies which pursue strategic growth in more than one “bucket”
outperform those that only focus on one dimension in almost half of cases
The next section provides more detail on growth strategies. For a deeper analysis of this subject
see our article on Innovation Strategy (https://strategyforexecs.com/innovation-strategy/).
Back to Top
Innovation as Part of Your Business Strategy
Innovation is very important for organizations. It can help us create growth opportunities, find
ways to reduce costs, increase revenues, eliminate competition and even create new markets.
But innovation alone is not a strategy. Neither is disruption. In the same way that product
development, market share, brand or a good mantra are not strategies. Yet those words and a
thousand others are thrown around as equivalents to strategy.
Exploring areas of potential expansion as part of your innovation strategy
Innovation just is one of a long list of words that people use, sometimes irresponsibly, to make
status statements.
The term has been so overused that it has almost lost its meaning, and has become merely a
buzzword in the strategy world.
Saying that innovation is your strategy is like saying that people, or good products, are your
strategy.
While product innovation (e.g. improving existing products or creating new ones) can be an
extraordinary source of growth for some companies, it is not the only way and is by far the most
difficult to get right.
In fact, it is the least successful form of growth with reports from Harvard Business Review
(https://hbr.org/) pointing out that 19 of every 20 new products launches fail, a 5% success rate.
How innovation can become the linchpin of your
business strategy
The connection that many seem to miss is that innovation, just like a good product or great
people, can only help a business achieve its goals (i.e. maximizing its value for shareholders) in
one of two ways: by helping differentiate its products and services, or by reducing costs, which
bring us back to our strategy principles.
New business models and enabling technologies such as multi-sided platforms
(https://strategyforexecs.com/network-effects/), digital channels, data analytics and artificial
intelligence (all concepts whose strategic implications we review in detail in the book) can only
give a company an edge if they help do one of those two things well: create unique products or
reduce costs.
If a new technology or business model can’t do either of those two things for your business, they
are just a waste of time and money, or a fancy word to throw out in business strategy reviews
and earning calls.
From the list of growth paths above, we came down to the four different ways in which
innovation can help an organization create growth and become part of your overall business
strategy:
1. Product improvement: Improving existing products and services that serve existing
customers (which also helps with expansions),
2. Product Development: Creating new products and services to target existing customers
or to enter new markets
3. Revenue optimization: Increasing revenues through new pricing options or business
models, and
4. Cost optimization: Reducing costs and improving operational effectiveness.
Innovation is a universe in itself, especially when it comes to the creation of new products and
services, since you must continually make iterative decisions about the products you launch, the
customers you target, the business models (https://strategyforexecs.com/business-model/) you
test and so on.
At the end of the day, the collection of initiatives that you handpick end up becoming your
innovation strategy.
We recommend maintaining a portfolio of innovations that cut across products, markets and
business units, with a good estimate of when those innovations could make it to market.
Innovation Strategy: Mapping your innovation portfolio can help you better balance your efforts
and resources. Circle size represents revenue potential
Innovation, especially when it comes to the development of new products and services is one of
the most exciting activities in any organization and the one that usually gets the most attention
in strategy reviews.
But as we saw, it bears some risks and the failure rate is astonishing by all counts, which may, in
the end, threaten the goals of your business’s strategy.
Three non-conventional growth strategies
So to wrap up this section we would like to review three alternatives to help you create
innovative products without the risks that an in-innovation effort carries:
1. Emulation: This is about becoming a “fast second mover” strategy rather than a pioneer.
Fast seconds (https://strategyforexecs.com/business-emulation/) avoid the costs of
Research and Development (R&D) and instead wait until opportunities have proven to
work before jumping on wagon.
2. Licensing: Striking licensing (https://strategyforexecs.com/licensing-strategy/) deals with
developers of intellectual property to incorporate it into your products. These can range
from the integration of a particular subsystem into your value chain
(https://strategyforexecs.com/value-chain/) (like a battery in a mobile device for example)
to licensing entire products to be sold under your brands.
3. Corporate Venture Capital or CVC: Investing in external entrepreneurial companies
through a corporate venture capital (https://strategyforexecs.com/corporate-venturecapital/) effort, to gain privileged access to their technology and products.
As an executive and innovator, you must continually explore opportunities for value creation
that could be forming around your markets and industries.
Corporate Venture Capital (CVC)
Innovation strategy: How corporate venture capital deals work
This will help you see future threats to your business which might be materializing in your
markets and second, this continual scan of the market landscape can also serve you as a source
of ideas for improvement of your current products or the creation of new ones.
Our final advice to you is to find ways to keep the innovation engine continually running in your
company and at the core of your business’s strategy.
In all of its forms, be it as the development of new products and services or the optimization of
your earnings, innovation should be a systematic effort, with clear governance and stages.
Your innovation engine should be always running to support the strategy of your business,
transforming raw ideas and market signals into effectively captured opportunities
That’s how innovation can become a source of differentiation or, to use a classic term: a
Competitive Strategy.
Back to Top
Business Strategy Template: A Map to
Strategic Choices
So far, we have explored multiple ways in which you can achieve your strategic goals and
maximize the value created for your shareholders, from the protection of the core business to
expansions, innovations and optimizations.
We can tie up all the options we have discussed up to this point in a decision tree, and create a
concise map to the different strategy choices that you have to make as a business executive:
A concise map to the strategic choices executives have to make. Download a complementary
mindmap at strategyforexecs.com/strategy-map/
You can now look at this strategy map and see a visual representation of the choices that you
have to make when developing a new strategy for your business.
To download the most recent version of this strategy map click here
(https://strategyforexecs.com/strategy-map/).
Now, if you’ve been around long enough in the business arena, you know one thing about
strategy: getting it right is one thing, but getting it done quite another.
Our research suggests that to “systematically” get strategy implementation right in any
business, you must master two core disciplines: Capital Allocation
(https://strategyforexecs.com/capital-allocation/) and Strategic Management
(https://strategyforexecs.com/strategic-management/).
Without those two disciplines well rooted in its DNA, your organization is at risk of not hitting
its strategic goals or derailing from the desired target without even realizing it.
Both disciplines, as well as each of the seven paths to growth and the protection of core
businesses are subjects covered in Strategy for Executives, which is now free to download here.
(https://strategyforexecs.com/download/)
Back to Top
Business Strategy Examples
Business Strategy Examples
I’d like to wrap up this article with a collection of short examples extracted from the book,
showing each of the strategies we have discussed above in action and applied to a real-life
business:
Differentiation Strategy
The goal of a differentiation strategy is not to “compete” with rivals and take them out of
business but quite the opposite: its goal is to avoid frontal competition by being unique, and a
perception map as we saw earlier can help us do that.
For example, Dr Pepper Snapple Group (NYSE: DPS) owns more than 50 brands of flavored
beverages including 7Up, Canada Dry, Snapple, Mott’s, Hawaiian Punch, Orange Crush and
Sunkist, all of which occupy leadership positions in the very crowded and competitive
refreshment drink shelves.
Dr Pepper Snapple Group brands. They are all unique in what they offer, so they are all well
strategically “differentiated”.
These products however are unique in what they offer and are positioned in their buyers’ minds
These products, however, are unique in what they offer and are positioned in their buyers minds
as top brands in their respective categories, and DPS didn’t need to destroy Coke or Pepsi to
achieve its position.
Strategic product re-positioning
If you find yourself in a dogfight over commoditized offers, you can still find a way out by
focusing on narrower segments of customers or flipping to a low-price leadership strategy
within that segment.
For decades since its introduction in the late 1800s Ivory, a soap bar manufactured by Procter &
Gamble (P&G), enjoyed a privileged differentiation leadership position, being the brand that
defined and resembled what “cleanness” meant in the soap category.
That position allowed P&G to command premium prices and retain a large share of the market
for a long time.
But when new deodorant soaps and “beauty bars” like Dial and Dove, which featured deodorant
and skin care ingredients, became serious competitors in the mid 60s, P&G decided to reposition
its iconic brand to become the low-price leader in the soap market, rather than engaging in headto-head competition with the new entrants.
The idea of repositioning is to zig when they zag. If low-price competition is tough, then slowly
move onto a differentiated position or vice versa. If neither position works, narrow your target
segment and move to a niche approach and restart the whole strategy process again.
That’s how you implement a fluid strategy in your business.
Low-price leadership and strategy
Companies pursuing a low-price strategy must make frugality their “religion” and a fundamental
part of everything they do.
That low-cost mentality should translate into highly efficient business models and it will be the
most valuable asset of low-price competitors.
In the case of Ivory, for example, the air bubbles that helped the soap float also helped reduce
costs because the soap needed less materials, which in addition to basic wrapping, lack of
deodorant and scent ingredients and low promotion, helped the product achieve costs
advantages that other soap bars could not even dream of.
When competing on price, every penny counts.
Market penetration strategy
A company can increase its share in any market by selling more to existing customers or by
targeting other segments within the same market.
For example, in the late 1970s, Miller’s Miller Lite beer was found to be markedly unpopular
with men, the dominant consumer segment in the US.
Its less-filling texture made it widely popular with women, but the largest consumer segment,
men, was not connecting with the product.
To make the brand more appealing to the male population, Miller invested heavily in an
advertising strategy featuring popular male (and manly) athletes.
The market penetration strategy was a big success, positioning Miller Lite as a top-selling light
beer in the US for almost twenty years.
Don’t forget that customer segments are just categorizations that YOU choose and there are
many ways to go about it. So when a market is not growing, slicing it in a different way may help
find new segments that could find the product valuable.
Market development strategy
When trying to target new markets, what you must look for is groups of people that could use
the benefits of your solutions, but that for any number of reasons haven’t been targeted by your
current market segmentation strategy.
Consider the strategy of Nestlé with its Nespresso machines
(https://www.nespresso.com/us/en/), which multiplied sales of its coffee products and helped
the company leapfrog in a very competitive coffee space.
Through Nespresso, Nestlé found a way to capture an entirely new market for its coffee:
customers who preferred to make a great cup of fresh java at home, rather than having to get in
their car or wait in line to buy one.
In this perfectly crafted business strategy, Nestlé created a great “vehicle” to deliver its coffee
products making them a perfect match for each other, reminding us a bit of the success of
Gillette’s famous razor and blade business model, where the company would make money from
the blades, not the razor.
Strategic product improvements
This is the most common type of innovation and the one most people are familiar with. Things
like “whiteness” in toothpaste, download speed in internet services, or storage capacity in
computers are all good examples of linear product improvements, where every new product just
offers more of it.
Disruptive Innovation Explained
What Clayton Christensen explains his theory of disruption, including sustaining innovations
and how they can boost or doom the strategy of your business.
The problem with this type of innovation as your main product strategy is that over time this
linear increase along common value dimensions can lead to the commoditization of those
dimensions, which means that the gross of the market is no longer willing to pay premium prices
for more value, which could end up hurting your business.
These customers already get more value in that dimension than they need, from any vendor, so
they turn to price as the decisive factor to pick a product.
For example, it would be more difficult today to find customers willing to pay premium prices for
greater whiteness in toothpaste, faster internet speed or more storage capacity in personal
computers than it was 10 years ago, since now even the most basic offers deliver more than
most people need.
The gross of buyers in those markets now turn to price to select vendors.
Strategic product development
We can cite many examples of products that when first launched created significant growth for
their companies resulting in a wildly successful strategy for the business.
Some of the most notable cases include Sony with its Walkman and the PlayStation gaming
console, Research In Motion (RIM) with its BlackBerry smartphone, Pfizer with Viagra, Apple
and its mobile devices (iPod, iPhone and iPad), Tesla Motors with the Roadster model and now
with the Model 3, Amazon and its Amazon Web Services (AWS) service and its Kindle eReader
and General Electric with its GE Capital unit.
All these companies found extraordinary growth through these products, attracting enormous
demand, especially from non-consumers.
Strategic optimization of revenues
When creating the strategy for a particular business, sometimes you may find new sources of
revenue by experimenting with innovative business models and pricing options on your existing
products, or through changes to the product’s value proposition.
For example, a few years ago Rolls-Royce launched a program for their jet engine products
called TotalCare where customers would pay for every hour of uptime delivered by the engines,
rather than paying an upfront fee.
Rolls-Royce then collects extensive operational data and performs proactive maintenance on
the units to maximize uptime and minimize disruptions.
Through this program, Rolls-Royce expanded its business model to accommodate the needs of a
segment of customers that could not afford hefty acquisition fees, but that could manage
reasonable operational costs.
The program was a big success, helping Rolls-Royce increase its bottom line from a market that
would be otherwise buying from other vendors.
Membership options, all-you-can-use, take-or-pay, freemium (a free basic version to promote a
paid upgrade) and a no-question return policy are all forms of pricing and business models that
seek to accommodate your company’s offering to the needs of a particular customer segment
and should be taken into account when developing your strategy.
Strategic cost optimization
On the cost side, you must always be looking for opportunities to improve your overall business
performance and finding better ways to use the resources of your organization, especially
people and money.
This goes beyond the classic view on cost reduction strategies where managers monitor
productivity and act reactively to correct deteriorating performance.
What we mean by cost optimization is actively looking for ways to reduce costs in a meaningful
way, making your operations leaner and producing a positive net effect on your bottom line.
While it is true that some cost reductions may lead to a productivity drop, as long as the tradeoff
seems to deliver a positive net effect to your bottom line, you should pay attention and
deliberately decide what to do.
In other cases, you may just mine the data that your business produces to find strategic
opportunities for cost reduction.
For example, package delivery company UPS developed an analytical model they call ORION
(On-road Integrated Optimization and Navigation) which analyzes the deliveries that need to be
made every day and provides drivers with the specific routes they must follow, including turnby-turn instructions.
ORION reduces over 100 million miles and 10 million gallons of fuel for a combined saving of
more than $400 million every year, which just as all other cost savings, drops directly to the
bottom line.
The continual search for cost reduction opportunities in any corporation is like a discipline that
you must religiously practice and over time get better at, because optimizing costs is always
good business.
This must become part of your company’s strategy and could become a serious competitive
advantage down the road with respect to other, less disciplined players in your markets.
Non-organic growth strategy
Inorganic (aka “non-organic”) growth strategy refers to a group of initiatives that rely on other
companies’ resources to deliver growth to your company, rather than developing such resources
yourself.
In most cases companies use non-organic alternatives as a way to achieve rapid strategic results,
for example to catch-up in a market where the company was left behind, to access key assets and
intellectual property, or to build synergies that would provide some kind of competitive edge.
Microsoft, for example, purchased both Skype ($8.5 billion) and LinkedIn ($26 billion) to access
technologies and capabilities that would help the company build a platform for corporate
services.
Although mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are by far the most common flavors of inorganic
growth, there are other alternatives that can be just as effective such as joint jentures (JVs) and
strategic alliances.
For example, car manufacturer Ford and clothing retailer Eddie Bauer joined efforts to create
the widely successful “Ford Explorer Eddie Bauer Edition” in the early 1990s, which featured
premium leather seats and other luxury perks, in an effort to compete with Japanese companies
in the luxury SUV market.
Both JVs and strategic alliances are in essence a collaboration agreement between at least two
companies to pursue a common set of goals, and are usually a cost-effective alternative to an
acquisition or a merger.
Leveraging Corporate Venture Capital to boost
your business strategy
A new trend that’s becoming increasingly popular is to make direct investments in early stage
companies by creating a Corporate Venture Capital (https://strategyforexecs.com/corporate-
venture-capital/) (CVC) arm inside your company to find and screen potential targets in need of
seed, growth or expansion capital.
Through a CVC program, you create a fund to invest in startups in the form of equity. With this,
your company becomes a shareholder in the entrepreneurial company as a way to keep a close
watch on its developments and progress.
A CVC program is an in-house effort that allows you to seek (and be pitched by) startup
companies with relevant technologies or business models in your business space.
Market research firm CBInsights reported that during 2017 alone Corporate Venture Capital
groups provided over $30 billion of funding across 1,791 deals globally, a 19 percent increase
with respect to the previous year.
Well-known corporations that have an in-house strategic CVC arm include Dell Technologies,
Intel, Salesforce, Citigroup, Cisco, Comcast and GE, all of which have been very active over the
last few years.
The way in which most CVC deals work is through direct acquisition of new shares of the target
company.
These shares are usually issued in big chunks or “investment rounds” by the startup that’s
seeking capital, and the corporation provides funds to the company in exchange for a portion of
the shares, making the corporation a shareholder of the target.
Basic structure of a CVC deal
One big benefit of playing the role of an investor is that you get to invest across a number of
companies, some of which might actually be competitors in a particular market.
For example, through its Vision Fund, Japanese tech company Softbank Group has made
important investments in both Lyft and Uber, two companies that are fighting fiercely for
leadership in the ride-sharing market.
Independently of who wins the ride-sharing space there is one sure winner: Softbank.
Back to Top
Best Business Strategy Books
The content of this article has been extracted from Strategy for Executives™, a book that
provides a fundamental, but practical, framework to understand and create a solid business’s
strategy from scratch, applicable to the dynamic conditions that modern executives face in
pretty much every market today.
There are many great business strategy books to choose from, including our all-time favorites
The Innovator Solution by Clayton Christensen
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clayton_M._Christensen) and Understanding Michael Porter by
Joan Magretta (https://www.simonandschuster.com/authors/Joan-Magretta/1842225), but
why go through all these different frameworks and ideas, some of them outdated, when you can
get a unified map to business strategy that incorporates all of them in a single framework?
Strategy for Executives, which is now free to download here
(https://strategyforexecs.com/download/), is based on extensive multi-year research, where we
broke down the most popular strategy frameworks of the last 40 years, extracted their core
ideas, and tied them all together into a single didactical and self-contained body of knowledge.
The research was led by Sun Wu, a seasoned Fortune 500 executive with more than 15 years of
real-life experience, complemented by a thorough revision of more than 300 books and research
papers, and over 500 hours of videos, interviews and formal training.
The result is a combination of fundamental concepts and a concise map to the strategy choices
that modern executives have to make to thrive in today’s highly competitive markets.
(https://strategyforexecs.com/download/)
Every concept in the book is explained from scratch so that, plain and simple, this is the only
business strategy book that you and your teams will ever need.
Author: Sun Wu (https://strategyforexecs.com/about-the-book/)
References
References
Wu, Sun. Strategy for Executives, this book can now be downloaded for free here
(https://strategyforexecs.com/download/).
Magretta, Joan. Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and
Strategy. Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Bishop, Todd. Jeff Bezos explains why Amazon doesn’t really care about its competitors.
GeekWire. https://geekwire.com/2013/interview-jeff-bezos-explains-amazon-focus-
competitors/ (https://geekwire.com/2013/interview-jeff-bezos-explains-amazon-focuscompetitors/)
Kim, W. Chan; Mauborgne, Renée. Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create
Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant. Harvard Business Review
Press. Kindle Edition.
Harvard Business School, Michael Porter on Competitive Strategy. Harvard Business School
Video Series, 1988. https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Competitive-Strategy-Harvard-
Business/dp/B006N0A2DG (https://www.amazon.com/Michael-Competitive-StrategyHarvard-Business/dp/B006N0A2DG)
Ahuja, Kabir; Hilton Segel, Liz; Perrey, Jesko. The roots of organic growth. McKinsey Quarterly.
August 2017. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/marketing-and-sales/our-
insights/the-roots-of-organic-growth (https://www.mckinsey.com/businessfunctions/marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-roots-of-organic-growth)
Sherman, Leonard. If You’re in a Dogfight, Become a Cat!: Strategies for Long-Term Growth
Columbia Business School Publishing, Columbia University Press. Kindle Edition.
Rolls-Royce website. https://www.rolls-royce.com/media/our-stories.aspx (https://www.rolls-
royce.com/media/our-stories.aspx)
Davenport, Thomas; Harris, Jeanne G. Competing on Analytics: Updated, with a New
Introduction: The New Science of Winning. Harvard Business Review Press. Kindle Edition.
Report: Global CVC in 2017: A comprehensive, data-driven look at global corporate venture
capital activity in 2017, CBInsights.
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