Dimensions Of Strategy

15 March 2014

Should all digital strategies be the same?

It seems that many of the debates about strategy come down to where one stands on the following four questions:

Stand-alone vs. embedded: Is there a separate ‘digital strategy’ document or is the approach instead embedded in other strategy documents?
Instructive vs. emergent: Is the approach ‘top-down’ or does it emphasise fostering innovation so that solutions emerge ‘bottom-up’?
Centralised vs. decentralised: Is control exerted by specifying individual’s roles or by enforcing rules, standards and processes?
Iterative vs disruptive: Is the approach one of changing the present or breaking with the past?

The choices are inevitably as much a reflection of one’s personal values, intellectual paradigms and preferred styles of working as what is likely to be most effective for the organisation at that point in time.