What are Miles and Snow strategies? These are 4 types of strategies companies can have. According to Miles and Snow, company strategies can be categorized as:
Prospector- These are companies who take a lot of risk and constantly look to launching the latest and newest in the industry. These companies are quick to adapt, have very high-performance work cultures and learn form failures quickly. Many companies such as Google and Apple who are focused on innovation can be categorized as this.
Defender- A defender strategy is a strategy that focuses on protecting their territory and expanding within identified and established markets. They are very risk averse and the focus is on cost reduction and efficiency rather than innovation and change.
Analyzer- An analyzer tries to have both. They protect and expand in established business areas and at the same time they will try out new areas to grow. Amazon is a great example for an Analyzer. They have established themselves firmly in the online retail space and at the same time they are also exploring new businesses like Amazon Prime Video, AWS, ECHO etc.
Reactor- A reactor strategy is basically no clear strategy. These are companies that follow whatever other companies are doing and they will neither invest in innovation sufficiently not focus on gaining efficiency to have a competitive advantage. These companies do not tend to last long with this approach. A lot of start-ups and regular business can be categorized as reactors as they just do whatever everyone else is doing and then fold up when things get difficult.
How is Miles and Snow different from Michael Porter’s Generic strategies?
Miles and Snow strategies allow for both cost leadership as well as differentiation focus which was not advised by Porter. This challenge of not being able to focus on both was resolved by this model where an analyzer strategy allow companies to have both focuses at the same time.
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