Idea 12 - Corporate Strategy Strategy is as old as war which, if you look in a dictionary, still crops up before business in any definition. 'The art of war' neatly sums up its military application, but management writers' definitions are seldom as short. Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes, in their Exploring Corporate Strategy, offer: 'Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long-term: which achieves advantage for the organization through its configuration of resources within a challenging environment, to meet the needs of markets and to fulfill stakeholder expectations.' Michael Porter is more succinct, and comes from a different angle: 'Strategy has to do with what will make you unique', he told an audience at the Wharton School recently. However you define it, strategy wasn't a deliberate preoccupation of managers for many years. They thought and planned, and some tried to be different, but that was just part of running ...