What is Strategy?

Business strategy is all about the choices that business make about about how to achieve their objectives.

Johnson and Scholes define strategy as:

"...the direction and scope of an organisation over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organisation through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfil stakeholder expectations".

In other words, strategy is about:

• Where is the business trying to get to in the long-term (strategic direction)
• Which markets should a business compete in and what kind of activities are involved in such markets?
• How the business perform better than its competition in those markets?
• What resources (skills, assets, finance, relationships, technical competence, facilities) are required in order to be able to compete?
• What external, environmental factors affect the businesses' ability to compete?
• What are the values and expectations of the stakeholders who have interest in and power over the business