The Executive Perspective

I, Kobe, came to the US in 1995 to work and study with Dr. Igor Ansoff, often referred to as the Father of Strategic Management. Although he was a great contributor to management thinking, I do think that he mainly got that reference because he was the first to dedicate a book solely on the subject of corporate strategy. I am dating his initial contribution as this happened in 1965. This book is described as “the most elaborate model of strategic planning in the literature” by Henry Mintzberg, a consistent critic of Dr. Ansoff.

One of the most recognized models of Dr. Ansoff  is the Product-Market Growth Matrix, or Ansoff Matrix which he published in 1957. Although it does not sound like much in our MBA driven culture where every problem has its own matrix, at the time this was a revolutionary concept.

The matrix provided, and it still does to this day, a good basis for a strategic discussion. Its main weakness was rooted in the fact that it was one of the first strategic models in the market place. Its initial success drove the widespread adaptation of this model and it quickly became a ‘one-size-fit-all’ solution for any company that wanted to do strategic planning. That combined with the analytical and prescriptive nature of the tools, checklists and processes in his initial work as described in Corporate Strategy, made it too difficult to consistently implement.

Although the matrix has its use, and it is never a lost conversation, it clearly is not a solution to every strategic dilemma, even less so in an ever-increasing complex environment. Lucky for me, as I am quite a bit younger, it did not discourage Dr. Ansoff in his strategic thinking. I strongly believe that to this day one of his greatest contributions to business world is the Contingent Strategic Success Paradigm. It is the major recognition in that strategy is not a balance sheet, a point in time where you write a plan that you put on the shelf. The strategy development process sets up strategy development as an ongoing process. Since that time, there are other great thinkers that I admire that have developed similar strategy development processes. The main advantage of looking at strategy as a development process is that there is always room for continuous improvement, and there is the recognition that strategy has to be flexible if the company is to stay successful.

Dr. Ansoff took that process one step further by firmly linking the environment, with the strategy and the capability, where the premise is: “In order for a company to reach optimum profitability in the future, a company needs to align its strategy and capability with the future turbulence of the environment.” Ansoff’s strategy process has been empirically validated its process in a wide variety of industries and over 1,500 companies.

Other management gurus have picked up several of his ideas and made them more famous such as Michael Porter’s competitive advantage, Gary Hamel and C.K. Prahalad’s core capability and Tom Peters’ “sticking to your knitting”, to name but just a few.

I will expand more about Ansoff’s strategy development concepts in future blogs.