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Purpose – To share with your readership a new approach to engaging an organization in strategy development while also aligning the strategy with the desired culture. Design/methodology/approach – The approach involves the use of multiple cross‐functional and cross‐organizational teams at all levels to collaboratively tackle the task of strategy development, including definition and launch of efforts to create a winning culture aligned with the strategy being developed. Findings – Fully engaging a cross section of the organization (rather than delegating it to internal heads of strategic planning or outside consultants) increases buy‐in and support for the strategy as well as understanding of the strategy and the strategic context. Utilizing a variety of alternative scenarios in strategy development helps in creating winning strategies under conditions of uncertainty. And coupling the development of strategy with the launch of initiatives that begin building elements of a “winning culture” helps create a strategy tailored to an environment that itself becomes a sourced of sustainable competitive advantage. Practical implications – While the task of developing a strategy while undergoing the beginnings of a cultural change process is challenging, the level of buy‐in, understanding, support, and sustainability of the strategy makes the effort worthwhile and the strategy both implementable and advantaged. Originality/value – Recognizing the power of a strategy developed by an organization (rather than delivered in final form to the organization) and a strategy that is grounded on the goal of creating and sustaining a winning culture will allow organizations to design and implement truly winning strategies.

A self‐help guide to achieving success in business. Directed more towards the self‐employed, it is relevant to other managers in organizations. Divided into clear sections on creativity and dealing with change; importance of clear goal setting; developing winning business and marketing strategies; negotiating skills; leadership; financial skills; and time management.

Building great products can be a reality for any company that takes the time and effort to create and execute the linkages between: winning strategy; the role of products and services; the product building blocks; and, linkages to customer needs. In fact, our research and work with clients suggests that a lack of alignment of these factors is the number one cause for the poor performance of many new products. This article defines for the reader the four winning strategy choices a company has – Product Leader, Distribution Giant, Innovation Superstar and Customer Lover and how each of these models puts a different emphasis on products and services. Once a company has selected a winning strategy, executing that strategy successfully requires adherence to the business model, including aligning product and services, customer imperatives and financial realities to that winning strategy model. Losing focus and drifting away from the chosen strategy or interspersing, for example, the product priorities from one winning strategy with the customer imperatives from another is a recipe for lackluster earnings and poor stock performance. Readers will learn how to outsmart the competition and build products that really win in the marketplace.

“To win without fighting” is perhaps the supreme ideal in strategic management. This article coalesces extant strategy literature under the overarching theme of “to win without fighting” as a style of strategy. It draws on managerial wisdom gained from the structural approach, the resource‐based view of the firm, the Schumpeterian perspective, and the commitment approach to strategy. From, respectively, both the challenger’s and the leader’s perspectives, it presents the necessary contextual conditions and the actual mechanisms through which “to win without fighting” could be practiced. Potential pitfalls of this style of strategy and its relationship with “to win by fighting” strategy are also addressed so as to put it into the larger perspective of strategic management practice.

Strategic planning in many companies has become an impotent process, largely devoid of imagination. These companies must revamp their thinking if they are to create truly innovative strategy embodied with the power to win. The author postulates four fundamental business laws that form the foundation for achieving outstanding results: the law of thinking first and thinking different; the law of anticipatory thinking and disciplined execution; the law of trusting in and respecting people; and the law of customer enthusiasm. The article includes specific corrective actions that an organization can take to alleviate current deficiencies.

Explores Sun Tze’s Art of Warfare, a set of 2,300‐year‐old Chinese military strategies which have been found to be analogous to some contemporary business strategies on competition. Uses a systematic approach to develop a model through Sun Tze’s Art of Warfare for businesses to achieve success against competition. Develops a “winning model” which provides a structured framework for the successful deployment of Sun Tze’s ideas in businesses. Uses some mini‐cases to illustrate the applications of the model and a hypothetical case “Entering into a new market” to demonstrate how to formulate winning strategies step‐by‐step by using the model.

This paper aims to enable students craft a winning corporate strategy applicable for organizations in various contexts. The practical approach consists of conducting scenario planning based on internal and external environment analysis, identifying the winning factor, proposing an implementation strategy of entry and exit strategies, and future customers, and evaluating matching of business ethics and legality.

Wesley Chen, the executive director and group chief executive officer, has the ultimate challenge of leading his management team to operate from a sole proprietorship management style to a listed large company in the Malaysian Stock Exchange. He identified the gap in the need to craft a winning corporate strategy for business sustainability. The corporate strategy should address expansion of their service offerings and needs to be carefully crafted to suit TopSteel’s risk appetite and overall business strategy. The strategy must also consider the internal and external factors that TopSteel faced with, identify the core competency of TopSteel, build in strategic agility in the implementation plans to address the dynamic business landscape, and most importantly ensure the corporate strategy must be in compliance to ethical and legal standards. The case study documents the one year of transition of TopSteel’s operations with a strong focus on the strategic management process direction for a winning OEM+ model through the use of SWIM concept.

This case is suitable for undergraduate or postgraduate programs or even executive courses in strategic management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy

This paper presents a procurement auction format structured so as to reconcile supply-side costs with demand-side value through the alignment of bidder and bid-taker interests. The existence of a dominant bidding strategy ensures this alignment and, at the same time, discourages strategic bidding. The format also involves minimal revelation of bidder information, making it attractive to bidders who expect continued participation in the same market. Another major goal of this paper is to engage policymakers through a discussion of important issues, which were brought forth in the course of designing and analyzing the aforementioned auction, that relate generally to the successful execution of procurement auctions.

The purpose of this paper is to present empirical results of an analysis of the strategic alignment between order winners selection and external supply chain integration strategies.

The research instrument is an international survey from IMSS II. It was applied in 23 countries. ANOVA was used for statistical analyses.

The findings show that firms choosing to use price as an order winner do not show any significant difference in the extent of external supply chain integration. On the other hand, firms that use delivery, customer service, quality and/or flexibility as order winners present differences in the extent to which they integrate their external supply chains.

The results should be treated with caution as any empirical study due to generalizability concerns. The data do not necessarily imply causal relationships, which could be an interesting topic to explore in further research.

The study highlights the importance of supply chain integration as a competitive competence, meriting management consideration and resources.

The paper shows empirical evidence with a large sample size that some associations exist between external supply chain integration and order winning strategies.

The concept of strategy has lost its meaning. It is widely inflated and conflated with related notions and the consequences of that are unsettling for both practice and research. The purpose of this paper is to restore the lost meaning of strategy.

The paper exposes the inadequacy of the current definitions of strategy. It, then, suggests a more robust one based on a list of necessary dimensions of a good definition derived from an extensive review of the literature and ends with triggers for further reflection.

The multidimensionality of the proposed definition better reflects the complex nature of the strategy concept and restores its lost meaning. This makes it more robust than previous definitions in protecting the integrity of the concept of strategy from the creeping of insignificant concerns and “surplus” meaning.

The new definition offers a new angle from which to reexamine the relationships between a number of usually paired concepts such as intention and action, planning and emergence, control and learning and formulation and execution.

The newly proposed definition has the potential to trigger creativity and to limit the practice of bad strategy.

The proposed definition raises the standard of what strategy is, avoids the sources of confusion, and reduces the chances of ascribing surplus meaning to the strategy concept.