The essential mix: six tools for strategy-making in the next decade

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide a solution that helps reduce confusion about choice and usage of tools for strategy-making. Design/methodology/approach: The approach is to present a classroom-tested system that integrates new methods for applying a parsimonious set of six widely used tools, within one, comprehensive, yet succinct, procedure for strategy-making. Findings: Findings, based on years of development and use of the procedure as the basis for teaching MBA capstone courses in strategy, reveal that it facilitates rapid mastery of the underlying theory and practical application of the essential tools of strategy-making. Practical implications: Practical implications include decreased tendencies for ad hoc or disjointed use of random sets of tools for strategy-making and increased capabilities to connect strategy-making and strategy-executing in an iterative process, as previous iterations of strategies that were executed by organizations are used to determine new strategies. Originality/value: Characteristics of the procedure which are original include: merging outside-in and inside-out perspectives on strategy-making in one, succinct procedure; providing an approach with general applicability to diverse types of organizations; providing a systematic process for identifying and rating environmental characteristics, using shared, theory-based scales, applied to fully-cited, real-world data, thereby reducing reliance on unsubstantiated opinion, providing full traceability, and facilitating knowledge transfer across users and time; and linking strategy analysis to formulation. The procedure described in this article has value for professors, students, managers, consultants, and the broad spectrum of people throughout organizations who are engaged in strategy-making.