Organizational Strategy Mid-Term

1. What is Strategy? Strategy simply put is long term goal of an organization that you base all business functions around. Your strategy what gives you a form of differentiation between you and your competitors? A strategy is the one thing that needs to stay consistent throughout all business decisions. The business world is always changing, so strategies that focus on positioning could quickly become irrelevant once the industry has shifted. It’s the underlying concept behind a position that should be utilized as your strategy. While all companies strive to increase profits, and shareholder value, that is not a strategy, it is a “constraint”. Those are requirements for a business. A strategy is the way you can increase your organizations value in terms other then financial. According to Katsuhiko Shimizu, a company’s strategy is a “plan for winning the business war”. He says that you can “win” this continuous battle by “attracting more customers then your competitors do”. He thinks that competition should be at the heart of strategy. When customers are shopping for various goods or services, the factors that contribute to the deciding factors are based on where your goods or service lie in comparison of your competitors. In an industry offering very similar commodities, you have to work extra hard on sustaining a competitive advantage. Since most temporary advantages can easily be duplicated, a company has to align all activities under the constant strategy in order to make it more difficult to replicate. The only way to obtain a sustainable advantage is by utilizing a strategy to create a distinctive product or services. As we see from Gause’s principal of Competitive Exclusion, “no two species can coexist that make their living in the identical way.” Unfortunately for the health care insurance