Strategic Drift

What is Strategic Drift?

• Strategic drift happens when the strategy of a business is no longer relevant to the external environment facing it

Phases of Strategic Drift:

1. Incremental Change

2. Strategic Drift

3. Flux

4. Transformational Change or Death

Why does Strategic Drift take place?

• Business fails to adapt to a changing external environment

• What worked before doesn’t work now

• Complacency has set in, often built on previous success

• Senior management deny there is a problem

Examples of Businesses that Suffeered from Strategic Drift:

• Kodak:

  • Failed to respond to rapid development and take up of digital photography- despite having created such technology

• Nokia:

  • Lost dominant global market leadership in mobile phones by failing to respond to smartphone technology

• IDK:

  • At one stage, the world’s leading social media platform; failed to respond to changing social trends and lost leadership to Facebool