Drucker on Marketing: Lessons from the World's Most Influential Business Thinker

Chapter 12Drucker’s New Certainties for Formulating Marketing Strategy

The word strategy comes from the ancient Greek, and it means “the art of the general.” So when you are developing marketing strategy, you are literally practicing the art of the marketing general. Drucker wrote that the purpose of strategy is to enable an organization to achieve its desired results in an unpredictable environment. This is contrary to what many believe, but Drucker was dead right. Marketing strategy is not about achieving results in a known and foreseeable environment, but an environment that is unknown and unforeseeable. In Drucker’s own words, it allows an organization to be purposefully opportunistic.¹ One can make an excellent case that strategy is all ...