TABLE OF CONTENTS Our basic business strategy was to charge a price so low that microcomputer makers couldn't do the software internally for that cheaply.
Bill Gates
This chapter will begin to bring the strategic management process down into the "trenches" in terms of the organization. In other words, we will see how strategic decisions are influenced and made at the lower levels of the firm. In the last chapter, strategies involved somewhat higher-level kinds of concerns (i.e., what kind of business should we be in, etc.). At the business and functional levels, though, questions will be addressed which more often deal with such things as how we should compete, how we should be manufacturing our product, etc. As you probably already know by now, these decisions are far from "less important" than corporate level strategies: without them, in fact, corporate level strategies could never be realized.
The concept of business level strategy deals with the issue of how the organization will go about competing in their particular product/service market. This whole idea of competition is, of course, an important one. One might argue that it is at the core of strategic decisions at all levels. It is of particular interest at this level, though, and involves the idea of gaining some competitive advantage over those with whom you compete. The further challenge, perhaps the most difficult, is to ensure that the competitive advantage you seek is one that you are able to sustain over time.
