A lot of strategy advice starts with some version of the same question: where do we already have an advantage?
It makes sense. Look for your strengths, find the part of the market where those strengths matter, then concentrate your resources there. If you have better technology, better distribution, a stronger brand or privileged access to customers, strategy should absolutely make use of it.
But I think this framing can make strategy sound more passive than it really is, because it assumes the superior position already exists and your job is simply to recognise it.
Often, it doesn’t.
You might be smaller than the competition, have an inferior product, lack distribution, own very little of the customer relationship and be missing capabilities that others have spent years building. There may be no obvious advantage to exploit at all.
That does not mean you have no strategy.
It means the work of strategy is to figure out how to create one.
The more interesting question is not simply, “Where are we strong today?” It is, “What sequence of choices would put us in a much stronger position tomorrow?”
That shift changes the way you think about strategic moves.
A company might enter a relatively unattractive part of a market because it gives them access to customers they can later expand into. It might accept lower margins for a period because doing so helps it build distribution. It might partner where it would eventually prefer to own, or invest in a capability that appears peripheral today because that capability becomes essential to the position it ultimately wants to occupy.
Look at any one of those choices in isolation and it may not seem particularly clever. In some cases, it may even look like a compromise.
But strategy rarely makes sense one move at a time.
The value of a strategic choice often comes from what it makes possible next.
That is why I think one of the most important questions you can ask when evaluating a strategic move is not simply, “Is this attractive?”
It is:
What position would this put us in?
Does this move give us access to something we do not currently have? Does it build a capability that will matter later? Does it improve our bargaining power, deepen the customer relationship, lower our costs, create switching costs or open up options that are currently closed to us?
Most importantly, does it move us toward a position where competing becomes easier for us and harder for everyone else?
This is where strategy starts to separate itself from optimisation.
Optimisation is largely about performing better from the position you already occupy. You improve the process, reduce the cost, increase conversion, sharpen execution and try to get more from the assets already in front of you.
Strategy is prepared to question the position itself.
Maybe there is somewhere else in the market where the economics are better. Maybe there is a capability you could build that changes the basis of competition. Maybe there is a customer relationship you could own rather than rent. Maybe there is a series of moves which, taken together, would leave you with an advantage that does not exist today.
And that, to me, is the much more useful way to think about strategy.
Of course you should act from a superior position when you have one.
But strategy is not just about exploiting the advantages you inherited.
It is about making choices that progressively create a better position, until eventually you are competing from somewhere your rivals would rather you were not.
A useful strategic question, then, is not just:
Where can we win?
It is to work backwards from:
What would need to be true for us to become impossible to beat?