As much as I confess to being interested in technology, I must admit that I am particularly lax at keeping up with news from the tech world. When I heard of the emergent strategies of Dell and HP, I was interested enough to continue looking up the companies a bit further to see if any other such strategic moves could be spotted in more recent company news.
Mintzberg’s Model of Emergent Strategy basically distinguishes two types of strategic moves made by a company- one that is deliberate and one that is reactive or ‘emergent’ as the organization is effected by changes in its environment. As I searched online, it was easy to find many articles on Oracle’s quarterly earnings and revenue announcement yet there was one piece in particular that held particular interest for me. Larry Dignan’s post on the complicated workings underlying that announcement was a revelation as it easily referenced a higher level strategic move that was not immediately obvious to the everyday news reader. The author even mentions Sun Tzu’s infamous writings that have guided countless military generals and persons of power throughout history; it seems as if these strategic directions are now ingrained into the common business mindset. While not verbatim from the Art of War, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” holds true in this case. As old competitors and enemies, Oracle and IBM are no strangers to strategic moves made against one another yet in their mutual hatred of HP, these companies are willing to cooperate with each other. It is always interesting to see how the actions of such large companies with so much power can be reduced (in a manner of speaking) to seemingly simple chess moves on the playing board of the business world.
