A management consultant's guide to how strategic architecture can improve an organisation's "Bottom line"

Gary Hamel and CK Prahalad (1990) introduced the term strategic architecture to the strategy discipline. Hamel and Prahalad (1990) had in mind the idea that in an increasingly uncertain, nonlinear world firms need the ability to think in innovative ways to connect effectively with customers and markets. Building the strategic architecture of the firm is an enabler and a facilitator of the desired connection of the firm to its customers and markets. This paper notes that since Hamel and Prahalad introduced the term strategic architecture to the strategy vocabulary there have been several interesting developments in our know-ledge of the practice of strategy. In particular influential insight from Kaplan and Norton (1992, 1996, 2004) on the balanced scorecard and strategy maps, and Hart and Banbury (1994) on strategy-making processes and organisation performance is leveraged in this paper to enhance understanding of strategic architecture. A model of the strategic architecture of the firm integrating a performance measurement tool and research propositions for a future empirical study are developed using these important insights in the strategy literature.