Strategic lenses

Strategic lenses are a concept of strategic management. They are the three angles from which strategy can be viewed and implemented on a corporate level.

Strategy As Design

This lens views Strategy development as a process of logical determinism. Through careful evaluation of the firm's industry, environment and available resources, the optimal strategy and clear direction can be determined.cite web|url=http://www.ie.lth.se/Education/Exjobb/exjobb/2007/NidebornStrahle.pdf|title=Where Is the Semiconductor Industry Going?|last=Nideborn|first=Joakim|coauthors=Kristina Stråhle|date=December 2007|accessdate=2008-09-27|format=PDF] This strategic process thus follows an analysis-selection-implementation process.

Fundamental to this view is that the responsibility of strategy development is top-management driven and that they are capable of choosing the optimal strategy for the business.

Strategy As Experience

Many proponents of the view of Strategy As Experience, such as Henry Mintzberg would argue that the design lens is often inaccurate as top level executives are too distant from daily developments of the organisation.

According to Minzberg, strategic development should be adaptive, and divides it into intended, realised and emergent strategies.

In this model, strategic development is the continuous adaptation of past strategies based on experience. In this view strategy is greatly influenced by taken for granted assumptions (culture) and involves large levels of bargaining and negotiation

Strategy As Ideas

This view interprets strategy as a process coming from within an organisation and influenced by the environment around it.

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