How good Strategy makes you a winner!

Creating a strategy is difficult, painful and risky, but it is your best chance to win if it works. Creating a plan is easier and less risky but cannot help you win in a market.

Let me explain how Microsoft’s Strategy helped it become the world's most valued technology company.

Before Satya Nadella, Microsoft's strategy was incoherent. Steve Ballmer believed that Microsoft was the most innovative company in the world and could launch market-leading products. Steve Ballmer even mocked Steve Jobs (Apple) when they were building the new iPhone. But we know how the iPhone killed Nokia and Blackberry to become the market-leading mobile device in future.

When Satya Nadella became the CEO, he understood that Microsoft was too big to innovate and win in the market through internal innovation.

So, he changed Microsoft's strategy to be the best partner for all businesses (build extensive distribution worldwide) and create value for enterprise business customers. It went all out to partner (Sam Altman OpenAI), acquire (Linkedin, Github, Nuance Communications, Activision Blizzard) and hire the best external talent (Manik Gupta - Uber, Mustafa Suleyman - Deepmind, Asha Sharma - Instacart & Meta, Aparna Chennapragada - Google etc) to succeed in its strategy. It became bigger and better by acquiring and integrating the best companies and talent in its portfolio. It's evident how this strategy made them win as Satya made his choices right.