"Crafting Competitive Strategy"

By Alan Procter
Former Research Director, MacMillan Bloedel

October 25, 2002
at 11:00 a.m. in the Kress Auditorium at IPST

Abstract:
The old-fashioned skills of cautious accounting, attention to detail and above all, a strong sense of strategy are the new business priorities. Modern business tools will now be more important if the emerging new breed of analytical business leaders is to prosper in the harsher world of a slow recovery. According to the classic thinking of Michael Porter at the Harvard Business School, crafting a competitive strategy is about establishing differences, creating new strategic positions and making trade-offs. Strategic positioning means performing different activities from rivals’ or performing similar activities in different ways.

Furthermore, the unique linkage of such strategic positions throughout an organization creates a strong locked-in “strategy blueprint” that is difficult to copy. A unique software-supported business tool will be described that facilitates the creation of innovative strategy blueprints. Dell, Southwest Airlines, Ikea and Starbucks are well-known examples of “best in class” for successful strategic positioning in cost-minimizing business sectors. Is there an example from the Pulp and Paper Sector? “Strategies for taking the hill won’t necessarily hold it” said Amar Bhide, Business Professor at Columbia.

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