Research found new venture performance can be positively affected by “strategic planning, marketing research, rigorous analyses, and well-formulated goals (all associated with causal reasoning) and by “resource leveraging, experimentation, adaptation, alliance building, and flexibility (all associated with effectual reasoning),” however, expert entrepreneurs engage more heavily in effectuation reasoning especially in “the early stages of business creation” and “focusing on effectual principles results in fewer investment failures” (Laskovaia et al. 2017, p. 689). This Guide introduces resources to help you develop business strategies with causation and effectuation decision models and an agile strategy.

The courses selected can be audited for free and you can find the audit instructions for Coursera and Edx courses.

Business Strategy from Wharton: Competitive Advantage (The University of Pennsylvania)

Learn how to develop and execute strategies to gain competitive advantage and improve your position in the marketplace.

Business Strategy Specialization (The University of Virginia)

This Specialization covers both the dynamics and the global aspects of strategic management. You'll learn how to evaluate industry evolution, build and sustain competitive advantage, formulate and assess business strategies, and align efforts to organizational strategy. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll apply your skills by creating a comprehensive Strategic Analysis for an existing business or a venture of your own. This specialization includes:

• Foundations of Business Strategy

• Advanced Business Strategy

• Business Growth Strategy

• Strategic Planning and Execution

• Business Strategy in Practice (Project-centered Course)

Planning: Principled, Proposing, Proofing, and Practicing to a Success Plan (Michigan State University)

The course will guide learners through the process of systematically testing and validating assumptions, and obtaining specific, applicable data. It will then show learners how to use these validated assumptions to generate pro-forma financial statements directly tied to actions and resources based on this business model.

Creating A Strategic Plan (SCORE)

Developing a strategic plan, which is essentially a roadmap for your business, enables you to gauge your company’s performance, strengths, and weaknesses over a period of time. It also provides your employees and management with directives to follow and work towards.

Introduction to Agile Development and Scrum (IBM)

After completing this course, you will be able to embrace the Agile concepts of adaptive planning, iterative development, and continuous improvement - resulting in early deliveries and value to customers. This course will benefit anyone who wants to get started with working the Agile way. It is particularly suitable for IT practitioners such as software developers, development managers, project managers, product managers, and executives.

Effectuation 101 (Society for Effectual Action)

Effectuation is an idea with a sense of purpose – a desire to improve the state of the world and the lives of individuals by enabling the creation of firms, products, markets, services, and ideas.

Understanding Entrepreneurial Effectuation by Dr. Stuart Read

Stuart Read is a Professor of Strategic Management at the Atkinson School of Management, Willamette University, the author of Effectual Entrepreneurship.

The Logic of Effectuation by Prof. Saras D. Sarasvathy

Saras D. Sarasvathy is a Professor of Business Administration at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, USA. Her book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise was nominated for the 2009 Terry Book Award by the Academy of Management.

The Agile Strategy Lab Podcast

Hear from leaders who are thinking about strategy in a whole new way - not as something you decide on once a year, but as an ongoing journey of exploration & adaptation. Agile leaders learn, adjust, and get moving again in real-time, responding to changes in the environment. People from all fields can be agile leaders - our guests explain what that looks like and how they've faced complex challenges. A quick listen to fit into your day between activities.

You can search Harvard Business Review to learn more articles on this topic. You can also check if your university library has a subscription to the Business Source Complete database, which provides full-text access to Harvard Business Review articles, or use the library’s interlibrary loan service to access the article.

Toward Agile Strategic Planning (SEI Blog)

The five trademarks of agile organizations (McKinsey & Company)

Make Your Strategy More Agile (Harvard Business Review)

Business strategy meets the Lean Startup: Taking lessons from agile (Techbeacon)

Click the link to find a Worldcat book record; enter a zipcode to check which library nearby has the book you can borrow. When the record is not available, a link to Amazon is provided.

• Read, Stuart. Effectual Entrepreneurship. New York, NY: Routledge, 2017. Print.

• Montgomery, Dan. 2019. Start less finish more: building strategic agility with objectives and key results. Boulder, CO: Agile Strategies Press.

• Fernando, Ralph. Agile Strategy: How to Create a Strategy Ready for Anything. Harlow, UK: FT Publishing INT'L, 2019. Print.

• Rigby, Darrell, Sarah Elk, and Steve Berez. Doing Agile Right: Transformation Without Chaos. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2020. Print.

• Bet-David, Patrick. Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy. S.l.: Gallery Books, 2021. Print.

• Collins, Jim. Turning Goals into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press, 2017. Print.

• Govindarajan, Vijay, and Manish Tangri. The Three Box Solution Playbook: Tools and Tactics for Creating Your Company's Strategy. Harvard Business Review Press, 2020. Print.

• Kim, W C, and Renée Mauborgne. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant. 2016. Print.

• Rumelt, Richard P. Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters. London: Profile, 2017. Print.

• Thomke, Stefan H. Experimentation Works: The Surprising Power of Business Experiments. 2020. Print.

Find More Details or More Books on This Topic.

• Saras D. Sarasvathy is a Professor of Business Administration at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia, USA. Her book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise was nominated for the 2009 Terry Book Award by the Academy of Management.

• Stuart Read is a Professor of Strategic Management at the Atkinson School of Management, Willamette University. The author of the book Effectual Entrepreneurship (2nd edition. Professor Read's research is focused on effectuation. Derived from practices employed by expert entrepreneurs, effectuation is a set of heuristics that describe how people make decisions and take action in situations of true uncertainty.

• W. Chan Kim & Renee Mauborgne are inventors of the ground-breaking “blue ocean strategy.” The strategy pioneered creating and capturing new, uncontested market space. They coined the terms “red ocean” – the known, competitive market within industry boundaries – and “blue ocean” – the unknown and uncontested market space, where demand is created, spawning new opportunities and growth.

SCORE mentors offer business strategy-related consultation via video, email, phone, or in-person.

Adopt Lean Startup Principles

Laskovaia, A., Shirokova, G., & Morris, M. H. (2017). National culture, effectuation, and new venture performance: global evidence from student entrepreneurs. Small Business Economics, 49(3), 687-709.