that's definitely a good heuristic for finding a strategy. strategies are realistic methods for how you'll achieve a goal without getting into the details of wh

that's definitely a good heuristic for finding a strategy. strategies are realistic methods for how you'll achieve a goal without getting into the details of what you will do to get there (that's the plan). in chess, it might be "control the middle" (if you're strong positionally). in basketball, it might be "run and gun" (if your strength is endurance and speed). it's important to understand that strategy only exists relative to competition. thus a business strategy only exists at the level of a firm, and not a department or a product, because firms compete in markets (for which a firm may produce many products). that also means it doesn't make sense to talk about marketing strategy or product strategy, because those are implementation details of the firm's business strategy. further, firms only have two broad strategic options: differentiaton (compete on quality) or cost (compete on price). within that, they can apply their strengths to tailor their strategy to the firm (our proprietary manufacturing process produces much more consistent and precise tiddlybonks, so we'll compete on quality).