The index below includes terms that are frequently used in BRI's resource materials, the Growth Forge software, in the course of performing our services. They may often be used by, and in many cases, coined by other experts and academics working in the new business growth and innovation strategy domain. We started maintaining a collection of them here for the convenience of our clients.
A Strategic Aspiration is the guiding intent for a strategy: the role an organization wants to play, set in the context of the environmental and industry dynamics shaping its domain. It sits between mission and concrete plans and gives strategy development a north star before options are generated.
A cohesive set of consequential choices made to achieve a goal or objective. A clear goal and measurable definition of success are paramount — without them, there is no basis for evaluating the relative merit of alternatives.
Assertions-type assumptions about the environmental catalysts included in a strategy hypothesis — the team's view of how macro, industry, or organizational trends will shape the opportunity.
Strategy Choice Assumptions are the decisions within a strategy hypothesis that are in your control to make or change: the deliberate choices about where to play and how to win. They are one of three assumption types in a strategy hypothesis (choices, assertions, and uncertainties) and the only one fully within your control.
The Strategy Diamond is a framework, introduced by Donald Hambrick and James Fredrickson, that defines a complete strategy through five interlocking elements: Arenas (where the organization will be active), Vehicles (how it will get there — organic growth, acquisition, or partnership), Differentiators (how it will win in those arenas), Staging (the speed and sequence of moves), and Economic Logic (how it will earn its returns). Its central argument is that a real strategy is more than a goal or a vision statement — it requires explicit, mutually reinforcing choices across all five elements.
A strategy hypothesis is a coherent set of consequential strategy choices intended to achieve a strategic aspiration or objective, together with the beliefs and assumptions about the environment and the behavior of other actors on which those choices rest. BRI Associates frames every new business or product strategy as a hypothesis: not a plan to be executed on conviction, but a set of propositions whose riskiest assumptions are identified and validated with evidence before significant resources are committed.
