Strategy and Strategic Risk

Patrick McConnell

This chapter will describe some of the key concepts and definitions from the strategy and technology literatures, with a particular focus on strategic risk. In particular, the chapter will consider the relationship between strategic, operational and technology risks, as well as assessing the impact of technology risk, strategic risk and strategic technology risk.

WHAT IS STRATEGY?

Strategy is a flexible term used to describe something that a particular group believes to be important but not easy to achieve. For example, it can be used to describe military manoeuvres (both attack and defence) and, at the other end of the spectrum, in investment banking to define a related series of trades that have a specific purpose. In this book, we will be discussing and dissecting corporate strategy: the aspirations and plans of management to make significant changes to a company’s operations over a period of time, usually some five to seven years into the future.

The word “strategy” comes originally from warfare (McConnell, 2016). In Ancient Greek, “strategos”, meant an army general, so strategy was initially considered to be about military leadership. Some of the great military leaders