Brand strategy: Strategic simplicity

This article argues that successful business strategies tend to be simple, easily understood and, rather than characterised by intellectual excellence, composed of the core ingredients of curiosity, a keen sense of context and common sense.

Brand strategy: Strategic simplicity

Jonathan Cahill

There is no need to make business strategy a complex minefield understood only by experts; curiosity, context and common sense are what's needed for simpler and more successful strategy.

Theodore Levitt summed up the role of strategy when he stated that: "To be successful a strategy must also be simple, clear and expressible in only a few written lines. If it is elaborate and complex and takes a lot of space or time to communicate, few people will understand it or march to its tune."

This simple truth was echoed recently by Bain &...

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