Use what you've got, to get what you want!

Business strategy is your plan for achieving competitive advantage. It's your choice of how and where to compete.

Your business strategy is different from your marketing strategy (your plan for communicating what you offer to customers or clients).

Your business strategy sets the agenda for all your business activities. It establishes criteria for all your business decisions. And if you're going to innovate, it should be in pursuance of the business strategy.

Your business strategy should be unique. How do you get innovative with your business strategy?

Competitive advantage is achieved through:

your strategic assets and
how you choose to use them.
The equation is: What you have + how you use it = your competitive advantage.

In other words, "Use what you've got, to get what you want".

To get innovative with your strategy, get creative with both parts of the equation. Think more deeply about your strategic assets (these are usually intangible things) and reconceptualise the way you view them. Then consider how these can best be applied in ways that your customers or clients value.

Sounds easy? The hard part is to see beyond the current reality and to forge a unique path, rather than copying what others have done. What's required is vision, the art of seeing the invisible.

More on this next time.