Rappaport highlighted the need to explore value and cost drivers when attempting to put
an economic value on a strategy.
A value driver can be defined here as 'Anything both within and outside the business, which might directly or indirectly generate cash inflows, either now or in the future'
A cost driver can be defined as 'Anything both within and outside the business which might directly or indirectly generate cash outflows, either now or in the future.'
Therefore value and cost drivers are tangible things.
Rappaports own definitions of value and cost drivers are actually much more tangible and much more closer to the direct generation of financial numbers themselves.
Senge is famous for the learning organization. Senge emphasized the role of learning not only for developing and implementing strategy, but also in managing performance. The learning organization was designed to shift management thinking as generating strategies as a formal/ bureaucratic process to a more diffused process of 'learning'
At the heart of his idea was the concept of system thinking. For senge system thinking meant that one needed to allow for free interflow of debate throughout the organization. This represented a major shift away from being focused on strategic decision making, centered especially on the top of the organization - in a hierarchical model.
The idea of learning organizations did become popular but in practical terms few organizations have actually been able to get the idea taken seriously by top managers.
Slyvosky created the idea of value migration. Value migration is a simple concept which means that business often need to reinvent how they ad value as industries and their markets change. This might involve:
- Getting rid of activities which add little value, which dilute value, or which destroy value
- Exploiting new ways of distribution
- Rebounding or unbundling existing products or services
Spender created the concept of strategic recipes. Strategic recipes are the taken for granted rules of strategic decision making which characterize the strategic action of the top team.
The strategic recipes are founded on things that have worked or not worked in the past. These recipes relate back to a past group or individual, strategic situations. When a new leader is appointed, particularly from the outside these are likely to change- or at least be challenged. Besides company level recipes we can broaden the concept to industry level recipes.
Stalk put the idea of competitive advantage into a more dynamic context, notably by incorporating the dimension of time.
Importantly Stalk stressed the role speed played in determining competitive advantage. As conventional paths to competitive advantage could often be copied, Stalk suggested that speed was an important path to competitive advantage work, in its own right.
By 'speed' stalk meant:
- The rate of competitive innovation: being able to innovate faster than your competitors
- The speed with which strategic opportunities are identified and exploited.
- The speed of implementation.
- Responsiveness to customer needs at a transaction-by-transaction level.
