Strategy is Hard. Tactics are {Easier}

strategy innovation future

Innovation and change comes primarily from the intersection of existing and new disciplines. What makes today’s reality challenging – business, economic, political and social – is that most of these combinations were not possible even a few years ago.  And there are new possibilities coming every day at an increasing rate.

Understanding these intersections help us identify business opportunities and threats or at a minimum provides interesting social media and cocktail party fodder.

But it’s really hard.

Sifting through what’s happening and where things are going requires new tools to help you understand the big picture, distinguish between central and peripheral concepts, brands or products and to see how concepts are influenced and change over time.

I have seen some of them in my current research and they are very, very cool. For example, see what the folks at Quid are up to  www.quid.com. In future blogs I will point out more of these gems.

But what makes it more complicated is that even when armed with this new knowledge, we need to decide whether we are on defense (i.e. “getting in the new game”) or offense (i.e. “changing the game”) all the while the rules of the game are morphing.

It occurred to me, therefore, that while it is traditional to say that “strategy is easy; tactics are hard”, I would argue that for the next 3-5 years, the opposite is true.

In an age of disruption, strategy is hard.  Once the course is set, our access to the talent, teams, capital and other resources is now global, virtual and mobile.  Tactics are becoming easier.

Strategy and Tactics: Welcome to the AND economy.

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