Good strategy: The view from below

Long Range Planning

Volumn 30, Issue 5, 1997, Pages 651-664

  Hay, Michael ^a,b   Williamson, Peter ^c  

^a LONDON BUSINESS SCHOOL   (United Kingdom)

^b Foundation for International Management

^c INSEAD   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0342456830     PISSN: 00246301     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/s0024-6301(97)00053-8     Document Type: Review

References (16)

1. See, e.g. Clausewitz, C. von, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT (1977).
2. ABB's Relays Business: building and managing a global matrix, Harvard Business School Case No. 9-394-016, p. 10 (1993).
3. Over the past 10years the authors have conducted strategy workshops for senior executives in major international companies throughout the world. Long-term engagements have been with British Airways, Mars, IBM, 3M, United News and Media. These workshops are preceded by extensive semi-structured interviews with prospective participants. These interviews encompass a number of areas including analysis of the major strategic issues facing the company, requirements of a strategy to address these and the formulation of 'good strategy'. The definition of 'good strategy' represents the distillation of more than 200 such interviews.
4. Cooper Tire & Rubber: now hear this Jack Welch!, Fortune, 6 April, 54-55 (1992).
5. J. C. Collins and J. I. Poras, Organisational vision and visionary organisations, California Management Reviews 34, (1), 30-52 (1991).
6. Cooper Tire & Rubber, California Management Reviews op. cit.
7. Prelude Corporation, Harvard Business School Case No. 373-052 (1984).
8. See, e.g. A. Campbell and L. L. Nash, A Sense of Mission: Defining Direction for the Large Corporation, The Economist Books-Addison Wesley, London (1992).
9. A full exposition of the strategic staircase will be found in M. Hay & P. Williamson, Strategic staircases: planning the capabilities required for success, Long Range Planning 24(4), 36-43 (1991). The essence of the argument developed in that article is as follows. Creating an adequate supply of requisite skills, competences and capabilities is a fundamental objective of strategy. Managing this process in an effective manner often proves difficult. The strategic staircase tackles this difficulty by emphasizing the sequential development of capabilities, skills, and hard and soft assets (such as plants and brands), in a deliberate way. The staircase approach has been successfully used by a number of companies. The example cited in the present article illustrates the manner in which Komatsu, the Japanese manufacturer of earth-moving equipment, carried out its assault on Caterpillar.
10. ABB's Relays Business, Long Range Planning op. cit., p. 15.
11. Dog with bone, Forbes, 13 April, 106-108 (1992).
12. Asea Brown Boveri, Forbes, op. cit., p. 11.
13. N. Hayek, presentation to the International Student Committee, Harvard University, October 1993.
14. Investors' Diversified Services, Harvard Business School Case No. 9-387-08 and Business Week (1992).
15. Procter & Gamble in Japan (A), (B) & (C), Harvard Business School Case Series 9-391003 to -005 (1990).
16. Raychem Corporation: Asian strategy, Harvard Business School Case No. 9-394-050, p. 14 (1993).