Level of Abstractness and Embodiment

The highest degree of abstract form of a concept is to have a dream of becoming like a particular company. In the example of decision regarding entry into the American market by Honda, this type of dream formed the background. It is debatable whether it is suitable to call it a strategy or not. However, it can certainly be called as a strategy with highest degree of abstract form.

A slightly concrete form of dream takes the dream to the level of vision. This is an expression through which it is explained in simple terms. What type of company one would like to be or what shape one wants to give to the company. A vision is always guided from the insight concerning the changes taking place in the world. As described earlier and mentioned in the example of Honda also, Mr. Fuzisawa had an insight that the consumer culture will propogate all over the world from America and on the basis of the insight, he could arrive at a vision that the car should succeed in America first.

A level in which vision is expressed in the form of concrete figures is the management target e.g. the “Global Ten” of Toyota automobile is a concept in which it aims at capturing 10 % market share in the world market. This is concrete figure through which Toyota has expressed what type of company it would like to become.

The “idea” is a further concrete level of conception. It gives a hint of how the dream, vision, management target are to be expressed. If the concrete idea is for materialising a problem or the target is not available, the conception ends up in simple effort target only.

A further concrete shape given to the “idea” is the “concepts”. A concept expresses in very concise form, what type of products or services are to be provided to what type of customers in what manner. Probably. This level is the most suitable one to call strategy of conception.

The conception level strategy is given further concrete from at the plan (medium and long term plan) level. Budget expresses it in the form of figures and is a further concrete level. These levels also express the future conceptions and from this point of view it can be considered that these are included in the conception level strategy.

One of the reasons for giving generic names to these strategies is the nature of abstract conception which forms the intermediate product and semi-products which give birth to concrete plan and budget. The abstract dream or the vision takes concrete shape gradually and forms products plan and budget for the concrete final products. From this point of view, probably it can be considered that the conceptions of different level of abstraction play different roles.