Product Strategy for High Technology Companies

IBM’s Bill Lowe also suffered from tunnel vision when he maintained an IBM-centric view of the future. In 1985, he gave Microsoft the rights to sell the jointly developed DOS operating system to other manufacturers in return for IBM’s free use of it on IBM PCs. IBM, after all, had 80 percent of the DOS market. Microsoft’s Bill Gates saw that this w

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those companies that articulate a core strategic vision know where they want to go, how they will get there, and why they will get there successfully. They are confident that they will be successful, and they move decisively. There is no confusion about what to do or how to do it.

Where are we going? How will we get there? Why will we be successful? Let’s take Cisco Systems as an example.

Yet it is typical of a company that confuses general goals or a mission statement with a core strategic vision.

Hallucination Sometimes a company looks into the future and sees an exciting opportunity that turns out to be as illusory as a mirage.

Robert Sterns, who was chief strategist at Compaq until he left in 1998, saw the Digital acquisition as a mistake. “In his [Pfeiffer’s] quest for bigness, he lost an understanding of the customer, and built what I call empty market share—large but not profitable.”

By looking at your vision as inclusive and exclusive of certain conditions that you either impose (internal facing) or accept (external facing), you can align your strategies with the realities of your company’s “condition” at any given time.

While knowing where you want to go appears obvious, too many companies operate as though they are blind or as though their strategic vision has deteriorated.

This is what a core strategic vision is all about—making sure you think about where you want to go.