Companies need to ask and then answer the question, "What is our business?" Addressing this question is the single, most important step in crafting a corporate business strategy. The company must clearly understand not only who are its customers and its competitors, but also what it sees as its competitive advantage. It must clearly identify its key business strategies. However, it is not just individual strategies in isolation, but the combination of the individual business strategies that, when combined, produces the company's overall competitive strategy.

Companies must decide which competencies and organizational context it must develop to help implement its strategy. Even after deciding on the competencies, culture, structure, and incentives that are needed, the firm is still not done with strategy. The real challenge is to develop the individual pieces, then put them together in such a way that on the one hand they support and complement each other and on the other hand they collectively support and promote the chosen strategy. Thus, the task is not only to create the appropriate individual parts of the system, but also to put them together in a way that creates a strong and reinforcing system.