business market opportunity would unfold and what the best role was for IBM. Gerstner began to position IBM to take advantage of this opportunity, but couldn’t immediately articulate a vision that would have credibility. If he had described it prematurely it would have been attacked, for, at best, the vision would have been only partially formulate

Today, most companies can’t afford to evolve incrementally.

A core strategic vision suggests the core competencies that will enable a company to succeed.

Shortsightedness

Some companies appear to be blind or at least sleepwalking. They just keep moving along contentedly until they hit a wall without ever seeing it coming. Because they lacked a vision to show them what was…

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On the other hand, statements such as “We aim to provide manual diagnostic tests for tuberculosis” limit the company to a single product line. This may be appropriate if the company has no desire to expand into other markets, but it is too restrictive otherwise.

Try to find a way to maintain revenue and find something for all of these employees to do, in any way at any cost. Invest R&D in anything that is interesting and keep investing in operating systems, computer systems, and microprocessor technology even if the future for them is questionable.

Product strategy is like a roadmap, and like a roadmap it’s useful only when you know where you are and where you want to go. What we call a core strategic vision (CSV) provides the destination and the general direction from where you currently stand.

The preliminary core strategic vision is placed in the center of the framework and is then evaluated for consistency with each of the boundary conditions.