StrategyProf

As you are probably well aware, Hambrick and Fredrickson’s (2001) strategy diamond  has quickly established itself as a highly potent strategic decision making tool in both classrooms and executive suites around the globe.  Winner of the coveted Academy of Management Executive (AME) Best Paper Award in 2001, and recently christened an AME “classic” by that journal in the Fall 2005 reprint of their “Are you sure you have a strategy?,” this facile framework’s effectiveness is a function of its simplicity and comprehensiveness.  This framework is also integrated throughout our new strategic management text, Strategic Management: A Dynamic Perspective.

We have employed the framework in our teaching since it was first published and are consistently pleased with how well undergrad and graduate students alike can learn to apply it quickly and adeptly.  Just as rewarding is the fact that our students return to us long after completing our courses to tell us how they continue to use the diamond model in their actual work. 
As Hambrick and Fredrickson describe it, “If a business must have a single, unified strategy, then it must necessarily have parts.  What are those parts?  We present a framework for strategy design, arguing that a strategy has five elements, providing answers to five questions – arenas: where will we be active?  vehicles: how will we get there? differentiators: how will we win in the marketplace? staging: what will be our speed and sequence of moves? economic logic: how will we obtain our returns?”
 

Since our text is concerned with dynamic strategy and the strategic leadership challenges of creating and responding to changes, the staging element of the diamond model perfectly signals to students that change is inherent – by design – in all good strategies.