ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the organizational decision-making processes and their impact upon conventional and sustainable strategy practices, product strategy practices, product creation practices and ultimately business sustainability outcomes. The central strategy concepts in the strategic product creation model centre around notions of: strategic flexibility, fixed-asset parsimony and the leveraging of intellectual assets, the firm behaving as a network actuator, coordination through modular product architecture and a flexible response to changing markets. The concept of fixed asset parsimony is when firms choose to invest into building flexible intellectual assets like human capabilities and knowledge rather than acquiring and investing on inflexible or of specific-use assets. This is linked to uncertainty about where technologies and market preferences are heading in the long-term as these sources cannot be determined with any level of precision. Product strategy in modular product architectures centres on the notions of speed to market, rapid performance upgrading through improved components, proliferation of product variety and flexible distribution networks.
