Week 12 Reading Reflection

1) What was the biggest surprise for you in the reading? In other words, what did you read that stood out the most as different from your expectations?

The biggest surprise in the reading for me was the ideas that cause people to leap into business, the so-called “fatal visions.” I knew about a couple of them such as people copying other firm’s strategies and failing horribly. But I was surprised to see, inability to communicate strategy to employees as that is the basis on why many employees identify themselves with their firm. A strategy-less employee base will be unable to do anything except work to make money and might jeopardize the overall goal, is the reasoning I can see for that inclusion.

2) Identify at least one part of the reading that was confusing to you.

One part of the reading that took me around for circles around my mind was the definition of innovation. For so long have I seen it defined in such deep and introspective ways that a basic definition threw me off as being simplistic and wrong on every possible level. Later, I reconsidered it since innovation was merely touched on in the section as another facet of the strategy.

3) If you were able to ask two questions to the author, what would you ask? Why?

Two questions I would ask the author would be: Why not focus on innovation much more? Innovation is a large part of strategy since it helps move a company forward and ahead of its competitors.

My second question would be: Is it ever advisable to abandon the most immediate innovation in your long term plan, if it might mean firm destruction despite giving you a huge lead later? I have pondered this after hearing about T-Mobile’s research into LTE and sidestepping 4G. It caused them a lot of damage as a firm and afterwards, they are quickly gaining huge profits. In short, is this a common example or no?

4) Was there anything you think the author was wrong about? Where do you disagree with what she or he said? How?

The author wasn’t really about anything except for his omission of the importance of innovation. I don’t really disagree with the author at all because there is almost no material that he did not cover in some capacity as well as easily explained the overarching failures that people have in making strategies.