Supply/demand everywhere

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Working  with public officials in Tyumen region of Russia highlighted the still-wider generic nature of the systems that strategy and policy try to design and operate well. Every commercial business serves customers with products or services and do so using capacity of various kinds operated by staff. Customers drive demand (sales and revenue), there may be a cost-of-goods, and capacity + staff drive the supply the business can deliver at some cost.

The surprise in venturing out of the corporate world into other sectors is how universal these relationships are. ...

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Generic architecture = rock-solid theory

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Strategy Dynamics gives confidence because its standard architectures (systems of resources and performance) are utterly reliable. It is no surprise that we find the same factors linked in the same way in any sector … every retailer serves consumers with products through stores operated by staff. But rename or replace these items and you have an airline, a school or hospital. Same applies across service companies of many types, manufacturing firms, banking …

Of course important details must be got right and adapted ...

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What’s the use of strategy tools?

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On behalf of executives and consultants who really would like some useful approaches to strategy, I last week issued the following challenge to the Business School profs’ discussion lists – so far, just a handful of the thousands of recipients have responded, and no explanation offered as yet for the irrelevance of strategy research and teaching.

TO…

  • Business Policy and Strategy List [mailto:BPS-NET@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU]
  • Management Education and Development Discussion [MG-ED-DV@AOMLISTS.PACE.EDU]

We had a great post in December from Richard Whittington [below], drawing attention to ...

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