Leaders and managers are faced with difficult decisions every day. Even process-level decisions must be made with the firm’s overall strategy in mind. The difficulty is that business strategy is a topic that is often described in complex or unclear terms, leaving the reader still incapable of making strategically sound decisions.

Transitioning from my formal background in economics to my career in business, I was challenged to teach strategy to many firms without numbing the audience with mindless economic graphs of the demand curve and strategic progressions. As a result, I have developed a series of easier-to-read diagrams that more simply and clearly explain business strategies. By asking a series of logical questions, we can understand how strategies arise, how they work, and their implications. This article is designed to give the reader more clarity about the topic of business strategy to help guide everyday leadership and management decisions.

What is an advantage?

Webster’s defines an advantage as “a superiority of position or condition” or a “benefit resulting from some course of action.”

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