Introduction

Since the end of the 1980s there has been a notable change in the way that many academics in strategy research conceptualise the strategy process and how they think about strategic content. The strategy process is increasingly seen as beginning in a modest and ‘introverted’ way, by analysing the firm’s portfolio of resources, rather than with such broad questions as, ‘What is our corporate mission?’ or ‘What businesses are we in?’ The content side of strategising is also increasingly cast in terms of resources. Thus, ‘Our strategy is to get maximum market share in markets x, y and z’ has given way to variants along the lines of ‘Our strategies in markets x, y and z aim at more fully sharing resources a, b and c’, or ‘Our strategy is to stretch existing resources and create new ones so that we are not trapped by blurring industry boundaries.’ There is clear, if unsystematic, evidence that this change is also taking place in managerial practice.