MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Great Strategy Considers More Than Customers and Investors

  • 7m
  • B. Tom Hunsaker, Jonathan Knowles, Richard Ettenson, Russell Baris
  • MIT Sloan Management Review
  • 2021

Every business today is under pressure to meet the needs of stakeholders beyond its customers and investors. Some organizations may view this as a burden, but others have successfully enhanced their value by meaningfully integrating employees, business partners, and communities into their strategies.

Reviewing these broader-based strategies using the framework outlined in our article “Changing How We Think About Change,” we found that strategies that consider the needs of nontraditional stakeholders often result in creative solutions that also benefit customers and investors. Some strategies effectively expand the addressable market, a key indicator of fit to purpose, which we define as the relevance and sustainability of the company’s value proposition. Other strategies primarily affect the company’s competitive position — its relative advantage, defined as its perceived distinctiveness and vulnerability to substitution — by either enhancing its ability to command a premium price or reducing its cost base.

About the Author

B. Tom Hunsaker is the associate dean of innovation and a strategy professor at Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management.

Jonathan Knowles is CEO of Type 2 Consulting.

Russell Baris is president of eLumindata, a data science firm in Westport, Connecticut.

Richard Ettenson is a professor and the Kieckhefer Fellow of Global Marketing and Brand Strategy at Thunderbird.

Learn more about MIT SMR.

In this Book

  • MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Great Strategy Considers More Than Customers and Investors