What is Strategy?

According to Michael E. Porter the need for strategy wouldn't have arised if there was only one Ideal position as there wouldn't be any competition,
but in the present scenario that is not the case as there is healthy competition in every field, hence everyone need some strategy to stay in the competition.

But according to Robert M. Grant, stratergy is explained as "The match an organisation makes between its internal resources, skills and the oppurtunities and risks created by its external envoirnment". from the above definition we can say that a strategy will have its own risks if it is not implemented in a proper way, hence there are few points that has to be considered before developing a strategy

• firstly the organisation resources should be identified and classified i.e. we should compare the weakness and the strengths of our organisation with our competitors, so that we can utilize our resources in proper way.
• secondly the capabilities of the organisation should also be identified
• finally a strategy should be selected which exploits the organisation resources and capabilities ( 2)

If we research further Roger Evered (1983) says that strategy is all about winning,he also adds that strategy is not a detailed plan or program of instructions, it is a unifying theme that gives coherence and direction to the actions and decisions of an individual or organisation. Further in his article he says that two sources of superior performance define two basic levels of strategy within an enterprise they are Corporate strategy and Business strategy. Corporate Strategy Defines the scope of the firm in terms of the industries and markets in which it competes, where as business strategy is concerned with how the firm competes within a particular industry or market(5)

Considering all the above discussed points strategy can be explained as a "process where the companies involve different set of activities to create some unique and valuable position".

According to me Companies use their Strategies to choose activities that are different from their competitors and the activities are planned in such a way that they exploit its own resources and capabilities before implementing into the market so as to avoid the risks, it can be explained with an example. I work for Lyca Mobile which is a leading SIM card dealer and they distributed their Sim cards for free for few days, the reason doing that is to ensure that they are ahead in the competition of SIM card business and before implementing this strategy into the market they exploited their resources and also their capabilities, then they implemented this strategy and it worked for them.

Ref:
(1). Porter, M.E. (1996), “What is strategy?” Harvard Business Review,
November/December retrieved on 5th feb, 2009.
(2). Grant, R.M. (1996), “Toward a knowledge-based theory of the firm” retrieved on 15th feb, 2009.
(3). Michael H. Zack (1999), “Knowledge and Strategy” pg (3-21)Retrieved on 6th feb, 2009.
(4).Grant, R.M. (2002), "Contemporary Stratergy Analysis: Concepts, Techniques, Application" pg (3-15) Retrieved on 18th feb, 2009.
(5).Roger Evered, “So What Is Strategy?”, The Concept of Strategy pg (1-15) retrieved on 19th feb, 2009.