Steve Jobs’s answer that day—“to wait for the next big thing”—is

bad strategy is vacuous and superficial, has internal contradictions, and doesn’t define or address the problem. Bad strategy generates a feeling of dull annoyance when you have to listen to it or read it.

A strategy coordinates action to address a specific challenge. It is not defined by the pay grade of the person authorizing the action.

A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is

A great deal of strategy work is trying to figure out what is going on. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of comprehending the situation.

A good strategy has an essential logical structure that I call the kernel. The kernel of a strategy contains three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.

In a changing world, a good strategy must have an entrepreneurial component. That is, it must embody some ideas or insights into new

Copying elements of its strategy piecemeal, there will be little benefit. A competitor would have to adopt the whole design, not just a part of it. There is much more to be discussed: first-mover

One of a leader’s most powerful tools is the creation of a good proximate objective—one that is close enough at hand to be feasible. A proximate objective names a target that the organization can reasonably be expected to hit, even overwhelm.