More Effective Strategic Management with Hyperknowledge: Case Woodstrat

Woodstrat is a support system developed for strategic management. The development process was carried out interactively with managers in two major Finnish forest industry corporations. The system is modular and is built around the actual business logic guiding and controlling strategic management in these two corporations. The main modules cover the market position, the competitive position, the productivity position and the profitability and financing positions. The innovation in Woodstrat is that these modules are linked together in a hyperknowledge fashion, that is, the core concepts of strategic management are brought to interact. The intermodular links are based on expert knowledge which also is worked into the modules to guide the manager through the process of working out sustainable competitive advantages. The hyperknowledge approach makes this support intuitive and effective, as the elements are linked to each other in combinations that are familiar to the user.