BP, like all large organizations, has a formal strategic planning process and a group of highly trained planners working away in Britannic House, its showcase corporate headquarters, in London. Chris was only vaguely aware of the planning activities of this group. He certainly wasn't acting on the basis of their recommendations. Perhaps this is your immediate response. A few years ago it would have been ours.
Strategy is what big companies do from the top down.
Strategy takes time to develop, time to execute, time to evaluate. In a word, it was creative. In the new world, that is strategy. It is too soon to say whether the BP kiosk, or even some future version of it, will prove to be a killer app, which we defined in the Introduction as a new good or service that single-handedly rewrites the rules of an entire industry or a set of industries. Certainly it has the potential.