407: If objective function is known, It's not a corporate strategy (Strategy Skills classics)

For this episode, let's revisit a Strategy Skills classic where we discuss how to identify a corporate strategy.

It is actually very simple to know if a study qualifies as a corporate strategy study. Irrespective of what anyone tells you, if you go into a strategy study where the key question – or what we call an objective function – is known to you, then it is not a corporate strategy.

This is because corporate strategy is not about knowing how to maximize an objective function. It is about choosing the objective function you want to maximize. That is the key difference between corporate strategy and every other kind of strategy. 

So, if you are in consulting, in an internal consulting role, or interested in strategy consulting, you should know there is a significant difference between corporate strategy and the other types of strategy analyses like business unit strategy, market entry strategy, etc. And in this podcast, we explain the two requirements that must exist for an engagement to be a corporate strategy study.

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