The Craft of Strategy Formation

von Bas Keibek Eric Wiebs Pieter Witteveen Marc Baaij

Formulating a strategy is one of the most important but also one ofthe most difficult challenges faced by businesses: How may onetranslate a concern into a structured issue and the hypotheses foraddressing that issue? How should one approach the designing andexecuting of the analyses through which these hypotheses can betested, thus creating the insights from which new strategic optionscan be developed? And how can one identify the "bestbets" from among the many different strategic optionsavailable, and determine how these may be translated into acoherent business strategy that the organization and itsstakeholders can buy into?

This book helps to answer these questions for the senior managerresponsible for company strategy; the project manager who'sbeen asked to chart and defend a new strategic course of action;and the student wishing to "learn the ropes" ofstrategy-creation. This book offers no theoretical strategy"frameworks". Nor does it propagate a specific strategyof any kind. It is, quite simply, a "cook book"describing a step-by-step, focused and fast approach for creating anew strategy at medium-sized and large businesses. It is a provenmethod used by top management consultants to help clients developnew strategies.

The Craft of Strategy Formation provides a crisp accountof the consecutive steps to take (and pitfalls to watch out for)when typically vague business concerns need to be translated intoactionable strategy fast. Featuring the tried-and-tested analyticaland organizational approach of top management consultants, thisintegral account of how strategy is crafted in practice offers awelcome break from traditional handbooks featuring largely isolatedframeworks, tools and cases; highly theoretical academic treatises;and largely anecdotal "infotainment" books for thegeneral reader.