This is my new blog about business and technology strategy. I decided to create it as an organized, hopefully thoughtfully assembled, venue for the things I think about for work and curiosity.

As a corporate strategy worker I'm well versed in the blessing and the curse of the terminology. In good economic times, when new mid-tier executives are minted like fresh dimes, it is fashionable to attach the word to any title 'Director: product management & strategy,' 'VP: PR messaging and strategy.' In the corporate push and shove playground 'strategic' is just a nice way of saying "I make decisions that count," and like most overstatements, it isn't really so. A February 2005 McKinsey Quarterly study indicates industry selection/participation was the primary, 88%, explanation for the best performing companies in the 1993-2003 business cycle. Clearly, few newly minted managers have any hope of making many truly strategic decisions after they choose the industry they wish to work in. Perhaps this managerial posturing exemplifies agency cost? Should companies ban strategy?

No matter what strategy ultimately is attentively attempting it prepares one for decision making. So doubt and corporate baggage aside here are some of the topics I'd like to cover in the next few weeks.

• HP's strategy?
• India
• Applicators, applicators, applicators!
  
• Scenario Planning: play time or pay time?
  
• Software and Services'
• 'ESPN Insider' and the inefficient pricing of rumors
• What is strategy, role, definitions and problems.
  
• 'Latent value' and Google's rise
• Is 'web 2.0' disruptive
• On-Star and emerging 'connected' services
• Customer loyalty Guru's and the Myth of the naive customer
  

In the mean time I'll also post any interesting reading I find as well.

Finally a cross disciplinary quote

"Value of a profession . A profession makes us thoughtless: therein lies its greatest blessing. For it is a bulwark, behind which we are allowed to withdraw when qualms and worries of a general kind attack us."--F. Nietzsche, "Human, All Too Human"

Even in our knowledge economy many still feel this way and enjoy the pleasure of traveling the path the company has set out. How to know when to choose the pain of learning over the protection of repetition?