From opportunity to strategy : how executives create a system of interdependent strategic decisions
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Strategy formation, the process by which executives decide on the unique set of activities to create and capture value, can be the difference between a firm capitalizing on a promising new opportunity or wasting a lot of resources on the new space only to watch a competitor succeed. Prior research on strategy formation has shown that it can be particularly difficult for executives in entrepreneurial settings due to the high levels of novelty and complexity that executives must tackle. As a result, effective strategy formation processes should combine the benefits of learning from experience and forming integrated understandings, yet prior research has not focused on how to effectively form strategy when both novelty and complexity are an issue. This leaves us unable to identify which processes lead to winning strategies in entrepreneurial settings. Moreover, prior work has been at too high a level to discern what the executives' roles in forming effective complex systems of activities are given the cognitive limitations they face. This dissertation addresses these gaps with three tightly linked studies. The first study is a literature review and agenda setting piece that categorizes prior work into a novel framework around the fundamental tension between novelty and complexity. The second study is an inductive case study of six two-side market ventures as they struggle to find coherent strategies to capture new opportunities. The third study builds on this by leveraging simulation methods to compare the strategic formation process discovered in the case study with other complex problem solving processes and explore the environmental conditions that make each most useful. Together, the studies of this dissertation offer rich theory regarding how executives can form successful strategies for their firms in entrepreneurial settings, paying particularly close attention to how they handle interdependence in their strategic decisions. Overall, this research contributes to the literatures on strategy, entrepreneurship, and organizational theory.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Copyright date | 2018 |
| Publication date | 2018; 2017 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Ott, Timothy E |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
| Primary advisor | Eisenhardt, Kathleen M |
| Thesis advisor | Eisenhardt, Kathleen M |
| Thesis advisor | Eesley, Charles |
| Thesis advisor | Katila, Riitta |
| Advisor | Eesley, Charles |
| Advisor | Katila, Riitta |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Timothy E. Ott. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Management Science and Engineering. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2018. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2018 by Timothy Edward Ott
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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