Although there are many definitions of the term applied to modern business, those that take a holistic approach capture its meaning better than those taking a more isolated view. Business strategy is developed in response to the particular environmental characteristics in which an organization operates.
Business strategy is developed as a result of the particular resources available to an organization.
All of these opinions have one thing in common - and that is to maximize the performance of an organization by improving its position in relation to the competition. A large amount of research work has concentrated on identifying universal rules and concepts that can be applied to strategy. For example, Porter developed three familiar generic strategies of cost leadership, differentiation and focus. It follows that an organization must make a choice between these generic strategies if it is to achieve a competitive advantage. In other words, an organization must either keep its costs lower than its competitors, differentiate its offerings so that they provide higher value when compared with others, or concentrate on a particular customer segment or product range.