A strategy is a set of coordinated actions that takes us from A to B, where B is a better place than A.

If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."
— from ”Alice’s Adventure in Wonderland” (C.S Lewis)

It’s a common mistake to confuse strategy and goals. They are different things. If you only work with the goals, without taking action, you never get anywhere. If you have a strategy without a goal, you are like Alice in Wonderland (see quote). It’s expected that goals and strategy change when considering market changes.

Effective strategies can be simple. Here are a few:

• Sign exclusive distribution agreements with hardware vendors to prevent Internet access without our software. (Google Search and the hardware vendors in the 2010s – it later became illegal …)
• Build reusable space rockets at a fixed price. (Space X in the 2010s)
• Integrate gaming to capture more user attention that can be converted to watching movies. (Netflix in the 2020s)

Strategies also have an expected outcome: the effect we aim to achieve when the strategic actions have been implemented. The typical result is a new business or a change in user behaviour. However, as Poker players know, outcomes are probabilistic even with the best strategy. No outcome is ever guaranteed. There is always an element of chance. When we succeed, we tend to underestimate the role of luck, and when things go wrong, we overestimate its importance.