Ag Related Quotes

In short, strategy is choice. More specifically, strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition.

Strategy can seem mystical and mysterious. It isn't. It is easily defined. It is a set of choices about winning. Again, it is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition. Specifically, strategy is the answer to these five interrelated questions: 1. What is your winning aspiration? The purpose of your enterprise, its motivating aspiration. 2. Where will you play? A playing field where you can achieve that aspiration. 3. How will you win? The way you will win on the chosen playing field. 4. What capabilities must be in place? The set and configuration of capabilities required to win in the chosen way. 5. What management systems are required? The systems and measures that enable the capabilities and support the choices. These choices and the relationship between them can be understood as a reinforcing cascade, with the choices at the top of the cascade setting the context for the choices below, and choices at the bottom influencing and refining the choices above.

To make good choices, you need to make sense of the complexity of your environment. The strategy logic flow can point you to the key areas of analysis necessary to generate sustainable competitive advantage. First, look to understand the industry in which you play (or will play), its distinct segments and their relative attractiveness. Without this step, it is all too easy to assume that your map of the world is the only possible map, that the world is unchanging, and that no better possibilities exist. Next, turn to customers. What do channel and end consumers truly want, need, and value-and how do those needs fit with your current or potential offerings? To answer this question, you will have to dig deep-engaging in joint value creation with channel partners and seeking a new understanding of end consumers. After customers, the lens turns inward: what are your capabilities and costs relative to the competition? Can you be a differentiator or a cost leader? If not, you will need to rethink your choices. Finally, consider competition; what will your competitors do in the face of your actions? Throughout the thinking process, be open to recasting previous analyses in light of what you learn in a subsequent box. The basic direction of the process is from left to right, but it also has interdependencies that require a more flexible path through it.

The thin film of water found on the microscopic particles that make clay has been shown to possess the proper conditions for important chemical reactions. Clays serve as a support and as a catalyst for the diversity of organic molecules involved in what we define as living processes. Ever since J. Desmond Bernal presented (during the late 1940s) his ideas concerning the importance of clays to the origin of life, additional prebiotic scenarios involving clay have been proposed. Clays store energy, transform it, and release it in the form of chemical energy that can operate chemical reactions. Clays also have the capacity to act as buffers and even as templates. A.G. Cairns-Smith analyzed the microscopic crystals of various metals that grew in association with clays and found that they had continually repeating growth patterns. He suggested that this could have been related to the original templates on which certain molecules reproduced themselves. Cairns-Smith and A. Weiss both suggest clays might have been the first templates for self-replicating systems.

The other half of an analysis of relative position relates to cost and the degree to which the organization can achieve approximate cost parity with competitors or distinctly lower costs than competitors.

The strategy logic flow can point you to the key areas of analysis necessary to generate sustainable competitive advantage. First, look to understand the industry in which you play (or will play), its distinct segments and their relative attractiveness.

After customers, the lens turns inward: what are your capabilities and costs relative to the competition? Can you be a differentiator or a cost leader?

capabilities relative to P&G’s. Once a full set of conditions is articulated, the list can be pared back by the group. To do so, ask about each condition: if all the other conditions were found to hold but this one didn’t, would that eliminate this possibility? This helps distinguish between the nice-to-have conditions and the must-have conditions.

Again, for your organization, have you used the tools to help you think through your potential choices? Have you used the strategy logic flow framework to understand the industry, channel, and customer values, your own relative capability and cost positions, and competitive reactions in a way that can underpin sustainable where-to-play and how-to-win choices? Have you reverse engineered the strategic possibilities and asked what would have to be true to ensure that this possibility is the one that gives you the best chance to win?

Ultimately, there are four dimensions you need to think about to choose where to play and how to win: The industry. What is the structure of your industry and the attractiveness of its segments? Customers. What do your channel and end customers value? Relative position. How does your company fare, and how could it fare, relative to the competition? Competition. What will your competition do in reaction to your chosen course of action?

The first of these questions, the capabilities choice, relates to the range and quality of activities that will enable a company to win where it chooses to play. Capabilities are the map of activities and competencies that critically underpin specific where-to-play and how-to-win choices.

At one point, we weren’t as disciplined about our where-to-play choices. It was everywhere anybody needed consumer insight or anywhere we thought it could add value. Just like a business dilutes its focus and in turn its growth potential when you try to do too many things at a time or do things that are further away from your core strengths, we were relatively diluted in the nature of the impact we could have.”4

Did you know that according to general relativity, any form of energy is a source of gravity?

The order of the mind must correspond to the order of things. In the world of reality, everything rises toward the divine, everything depends on it, because everything springs from it. In the effigy of the real within us, we can note the same dependence, unless we have turned topsy-turvy the true relations of things.

Punctuated equilibrium,” Lin said, “is a theory proposed in 1972 by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Before that time, evolutionary biologists had debated how new species developed. Most thought it happened gradually over time—what we call phyletic gradual evolution. But the fossil record doesn’t support that. It shows that when a species emerges, it is generally stable, with little genetic change, for long stretches of time. When evolution does occur, it happens rapidly—new species branch off in a relatively short period of time. On a geological scale,

Punctuated equilibrium,” Lin said, “is a theory proposed in 1972 by Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould. Before that time, evolutionary biologists had debated how new species developed. Most thought it happened gradually over time—what we call phyletic gradual evolution. But the fossil record doesn’t support that. It shows that when a species emerges, it is generally stable, with little genetic change, for long stretches of time. When evolution does occur, it happens rapidly—new species branch off in a relatively short period of time. On a geological scale, anyway.

Relativity proved that gravity and energy are essentially manifestations of the same thing. In particular, both distort the curvature of space-time. Our breakthrough is that we could use increasingly large amounts of energy to modify gravity and distort space-time, essentially causing a specific object to be displaced in space and time.

NCI, ever-sensitive to offending Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Ag, and Big Chemical, had spent almost nothing to address public exposures to carcinogens from medicines, vaccines, meats, processed foods, sugar, and chemical-laden agriculture. Mainstream cancer research suggests that one-third of all cancers could be eliminated through lifestyle changes. But according to cancer expert Samuel Epstein, NCI spent “Just 1 million—that is 0.02 percent of its $4.7 billion budget in 2005—on education, press releases, and public relations to encourage” better eating habits to prevent cancer.61

Strategy therefore requires making explicit choices—to do some things and not others—and building a business around those choices.2 In short, strategy is choice. More specifically, strategy is an integrated set of choices that uniquely positions the firm in its industry so as to create sustainable advantage and superior value relative to the competition.

will slow down the process and add no value—and might become dangerous if momentum is built behind them. So there is a drive to expected, straightforward options that stay relatively close to home. Then, the options are typically assessed using a single metric: the financial plausibility test. A high net present value or internal rate of return helpfully buttresses the claim that a particular option is the best choice.