The Financial Times Guide to Strategy: How to Create and Deliver a Winning Strategy, Third Edition

Chapter 3. Swings in strategic thinking: six phases

The first focus, at the end of the 1950s and in the 1960s, was on the best way to plan the development of large, multi-product firms. This was the province of classic strategic planning at the Centre, although the dominant prescription was to decentralise into largely autonomous divisions, and to diversify by making acquisitions in attractive but often unrelated businesses.

The second and most fruitful period, roughly from 1965 to 1975, was that dominated by BCG and its concept of portfolio management. BCG’s micro-economic approach was highly prescriptive, telling firms to:

• focus on business positions where the firm had, or could realistically obtain, market leadership

• divest other businesses

• focus ...