3 Revisit the descriptions of Amazon and Nokia at the beginning of the chapter. Think about the following issues:

(a) What are/were the key performance objectives for Nokia and the retail ( Amazon.com ) part of Amazon?

TAKING IT FURTHER There are many good books on strategy. For example, for one of the best see Johnson, G., Whittington R. and Scholes, K. (2011) Exploring Strategy (9th edn), Pearson.

Boyer, K.K. and McDermott, C. (1999) ‘Strategic consensus in operations strategy’, Journal of Operations Management, Vol. 17, No. 3, March. Academic, but interesting.

Hamel, G. and Prahalad, C.K. (1993) ‘Strategy as stretch and leverage’, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 71, No. 2–3. This article is typical of some of the (relatively) recent ideas influencing operations strategy.

(b) What are the key strategic design, delivery and development decisions that are/were important for each business?

(c) Why does the ‘capabilities-based’ strategy described by Jeff Bezos present such a challenge?