What is strategy ?

The number one base of business are designing and maintaining the clear and focus strategy. But what is strategy ? According to Jack Trout in his book "Trout on Strategy", the cores of strategy are survive, perception, being different, competition, specialization, simplicity, leadership and reality.
Good strategy is how to survive in the competitive situation. The real winning of the company in a competition is winning the communication competition. The example is positioning strategy in marketing positioning in a change of the advertisement, including the changes of name, price, package and cover. Not a changes of all side of product. Positioning is a something that you do for your customers mind, to place the product into your candidate of customers. The best approach for the public or your candidate of customer is through a simple message.
Good strategy is being different, be the first, be a leader and dominating the attribute, event and production process. It is too late if we want to follow the leader and being the second.
The core of strategy is a competition. Recognize your competitors, avoid their strengths and exploited their weakness. Even we need a spy to check our competitor and listen the idea of our staff in the field.
It is better to be excellent in one segment than good at all segment. Tell your customers that you are a specialist. Because the customer want a best service in just what they needed. Being a specialist impresses that we are an expert and it can produce a faith of the customers.
The core of strategy is a leadership. No one will follow you if you yourself don't know where to make a step. Akio Morita leads Sony to find a new market opportunity called " Pioneer Spirit ". Sony is a pioneer and never thinks to follow the other. They crate handycam, first home video recorder and floppy disk. Their most famous discovery is Morita's ideas about walkman.
Reality is the core of strategy. The core is market reality . Even the chairman can't do all things but have to pay attention in market reality. How to dominate a market ? The answer is Positioning. The First Rule of Positioning is " It is better to be the first than to be the better "

Source : Smart in Leadership by M Suyanto