Roger L. Martin’s strategy primer

Have you ever received a brief that made you think “Wait… how do we even know this is the right direction to go in?”

You’re wondering if there was a strategy behind the design direction. Great strategy is about choices: figuring out a series of options, and picking the one for which the most compelling argument can be made.

This is the rallying cry of one of the world’s top strategic thinkers, and teacher of IDEO U’s course on Designing Strategy, Roger L. Martin.

Here you’ll get a summary of Martin’s seminal book Playing to win: How strategy really works. Language like ‘winning’ and ‘compete’ might feel NQR if you work with the public sector, but remember that every organisation is trying to ‘win’ against something – even if it’s a behaviour like violence or a crisis like COVID-19.

It’s a useful read whether you're in a position to make strategic decisions yourself, or just want an insight into (one of) the ways it's done.