Apple 's An Old Traditional Chinese Proverb

There are a gazillion companies out there, but some stand out. Whether it is because of their popularity, affiliations, history, profile or service, one factor simply makes or breaks a company; it’s strategy management process.

‘Strategy is the direction and scope of an organisation over the long term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment through it’

Strategy is a set of complicated tactics formulated by the executives of a company directed towards the achievement of company’s goal (Salmela, 2002). It is about all the path ways that a company would follow to reach its ultimate goal. It is a company’s strategy which helps to identify what it does better than the other companies in the industries, which may be different from what it does best. For successful strategy formulation and implementation, a company should know the needs of customers and should have knowledge of its competitors. Through a good strategy a company would identify that opportunity which makes it different from the others (Thompson, 2005).

Strategy is defined as a plan of action designed to achieve a major objective. This is the overall operations to achieve a goal. During war the military has tactics which come from the art of planning. A strategy is the guide for the individual, business, or organization to achieve the objective at hand. An individual should map out and meditate in advance to reduce the chance of failing. So, for FedEx, it could be to map out routes to make sure delivery personal does not overlap each other. A strategy is a compass that guides a person along to make sure they achieve their objective.

Apple’s first computer was developed around the 1970’s. Since then they have surpass one of

Strategic planning involves making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies and how the organization decides to implement their goals (Bateman, Snell, Konopaske, pg. 113). Strategies help organizations to have a clear perspective on how to go about accomplishing the goals they have in place. All organizations have a clear vision of what their mission and purpose as a company is, they know how to fulfill the mission, vision, and purpose and they know how to ensure that they accomplish all their goals. However, the route the organization takes to define these things determines how effective they will be.

Strategy is all about the future and planning for things to come.  Or is it?  Well, I think it is more than that.  Strategy certainly has the future in mind but much of strategy is about executing a plan and the methods behind executing that as well.  It is about timing and controlling decisions to follow a plan at the right points.  The timing of strategic maneuvers is often the most important point of strategic plan and unfortunately, timing is also the thing that gets in the way the most of following a strategy successfully.  Things come up, issues occur, crisis hits and needs to be tended to, there just always seems to be another urgent thing requiring your attention and time before you can get to delivering on that strategy.

An organisation’s strategy plays an important role of providing direction of where company wants to be and how best to allocate the company’s resources to meet its objectives. The formulation of business strategies has evolved over the years and has been made more difficult in recent by the uncertain operating environments and global financial crises.

Alfred Chandler(1963) defines strategy as ‘ the determination of the long-run goals and objectives of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action of an enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out these goals’. And Michael porter(1996) sees it as ‘Competitive strategy is about being different. It means deliberately choosing different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value’.

Apple has always been something of a trendsetter in the tech space. Its product history since Steve Jobs’s return in 1997 gives us a solid list of examples to choose from, from its very first iPod, to Apple’s PowerBook (and later MacBook) lines, to the iPhone and the iPad. Apple’s history is dominated by products that existed before Apple had a crack at them - but it was Apple who simplified them, made them appealing on a much wider scale, and ultimately made them objects of desire for the masses.

There is no exact definition for Strategy because it is defined in different ways as some people think that make a plan to get success in future is a strategy while others think that future is hard to predict. Exceptionally, some Japanese companies have no strategies though these companies have a good cost and continuous improvement. The definition for strategy is to explain the direction and scope of any company for the long term to achieve advantage for the company or to fulfill the needs and expectations. Strategy is different from Operational effectiveness and they work in different manner in the companies. Michael Porter, who is a professor at Harvard Business School and a strategy expert, says that it should determine how organizational resources and skills should create advantage. Accordingly, Strategy can also be defined as an organizational change during actions in the organizations for better and advantageous results or to determine how we win and get success in the future period. It is a needful developed plan with respect to market to compete the world. Organizations should be responsible for competitive changes according to the market. It is the main goal for any Organizations. Business/IT strategy is very important to know the success rate of your business. Apart from Business Strategy, the other two main types of strategy are Corporate Strategy and Team Strategy. These strategies give competitive advantage of cost leadership, differentiation and focus. The

‘Strategic Management’ is a very complex term as many eminent researchers and scholars have had different views and conclusions on strategy. According to White (2004), “Strategic Management involves both systematically developing an idea together with its implications and testing the empirical validity & usefulness of that idea against the real world.” Thus strategy is not only about planning for future but also about confirming the validity of the hypothesis considered and implementing it successfully. Strategy formation may take various forms such as implicit, explicit or emergent. Implicit strategy is a strategy formed by intuitions of an individual. As per implicit strategists, strategic management is about reading the environment

A strategy is said to be a plan that is made for the long term success of a product or brand. It is extremely important to have a strategy in order to figure out a direction towards which any company is able to focus all its resources efficiently and achieve desired outcomes. Formulating effective strategies is a considerably long process in itself that combines analysing several factors, situations and issues that are already present in a company and looking to improve on them alongside trying to implement various innovations and ideas to collectively create a direction towards which they can move and direct the resources available to them.

Strategy is known as in which ways firms manage with the external and internal situations which is going around with the corporate world, which are vibrant and promising. Corporate rivals, new trends and technologies all transform time to time. Companies ought to exploit their entire strategic assets which conclude specially their workers, manage with stakeholders like financial contributor and providers in order to meet customer expectation and satisfaction. At times it is compulsory that they deal with governmental and more bounds and most of the times they need to outsmart their rivals. The strategic management procedure is the mixture of various things such as refining the anticipated ends, by innovating strategies figuring out a way

Johnson, Wittington, Scholes, Angwin and Regnér (2014, p. 3) defines strategy as ‘the long-term direction of an organisation’.