Strategy, Strategy Formulation, and Business Models

Abstract

Entrepreneurs work in highly uncertain conditions, depend on limited resources, and try to make sense of the market complexity with their limited information on the contextual environment. In the process, they set revenue generating and profit-making goals, acquire and develop needed resources, build capabilities and skills, and analyze competitors, their products and their market approach to secure competitive advantage. However, most entrepreneurs take actions, make decisions and commitments, and allocate resources without doing sufficient analysis of the competing choices that they have. With a better understanding of what strategy frameworks and tools are available out there, how strategies work, how these tools and systems can help design their business activities, create value, and compete in the marketplace, they can take necessary actions toward achieving their objectives. Whether the entrepreneurs’ objective is to create wealth or to tackle a social challenge, they should adopt strategy tools to maximize their chances of achieving set goals. Here, we delineated some of the strategic means that are essential for the development of an enterprise and attain market competitiveness. Knowledge-based entrepreneurship needs to have a different approach to the designing of business models as businesses in these sectors rely heavily on emerging technologies and in-depth technological and scientific knowledge. In this chapter, we provided a detailed view of knowledge-based social entrepreneurship, possible strategic approaches available to aspiring entrepreneurs, various widely used business models, and emerging concepts in the development of business models for knowledge-based social entrepreneurship.