The importance of strategy to an organization is like the foundation stone to a building. Under many successful organizations like IKEA, Southwest Airline, Nokia, Intel, it is a clear strategy that well tailors and establishes a unique set of their activities. In other words, having a clear strategy allows an organization “to deliberately choose a different set of activities to deliver a unique mix of value” . That is not only about what to do, but also about what to not do. It is also about doing different things or in the different way. It is very important because it is a long term direction that guides every activities of an organization. Without a clear strategy, it is the same way of a building without a foundation stone, the success of an organization will be account for statistics, their activities are just like “Alice’s Adventures in the wonderland”, “you don’t know where to go, then which way is doesn’t matter”.
Consider Nokia, their strategy is “connecting people”. It is quite simple. However, in practice it reveals some critical objectives that may be considered impossible. That is how to make the products affordable to everyone. That is how to meet the need of everyone. Those must be achieved at the same way with the reliability, easy-of-use, availability and fashionability.
In order to do that, first of all, Nokia has been putting intensively constant efforts on R&D. The firm runs 11 R&D centers worldwide and employed more than 15,000 employees for its R&D. This intensive investment makes room for Nokia’s ability to faster design and cope with the changing demand and especially to allow for mass customization. Second, Nokia has been developing a unique mix of supply chain management practices that effectively and ...