Cheap Strategy
Martin’s "something from nothing" theme: how resource-constrained players build real advantage without outspending anyone.
The pattern across his favourite cases, Singapore, the Rotman School, Tennis Canada, is the same: a player who couldn't win a spending contest found a cheap, hard-to-copy basis of advantage instead. Singapore had no resources and no hinterland, and chose incorruptible rule of law and reliability, in a region where rivals would not pay the political price of copying it, a textbook "won't" under the Can't-Won't Test. Rotman and Tennis Canada held assets already owned, research output, tournaments, that weren't being used strategically: deployed, not acquired.
The two search vectors
First, underutilised assets: what do we already hold that we aren't using strategically? Customer trust, data, distribution, a capability built for one purpose that transfers to another. Most organisations have never taken this inventory, because budgeting looks forward at what to buy, not sideways at what is idle. Second, cheap but uncopyable commitments: what would cost us discipline rather than capital, and cost rivals their identity to imitate? Radical transparency, a service guarantee, a pricing principle: free to declare, expensive to live, and model-breaking for the competitor whose economics depend on not doing it.
Where the question belongs
For constrained organisations this question belongs before Where to Play, as a sixth pre-question to the cascade. Choosing a field first and then discovering you can't afford anyone's way of winning on it produces the losing version of Playing to Play: imitating rich competitors' expensive How to Win choices with less money, which is a strategy for coming second at best.
How this connects to OKRs
Cheap strategy questions make unusually good quarters. An OKR that deploys an idle asset or installs a disciplined commitment is low-spend and high-leverage, exactly the profile a resource-constrained company should be betting its focus on, and the Key Results are usually easy to name because the asset's value was visible all along. In our experience the inventory conversation alone, run honestly, is worth more than most strategy offsites.
One line to keep: The cheapest advantage is the asset you already own and have never used strategically.
Our synthesis of Roger Martin’s published work, sources credited. Read the originals: they’re excellent.
What is cheap strategy? +
Advantage bought with discipline rather than capital: an underutilised asset you already hold, or a commitment that is cheap to declare and model-breaking for a rival to copy. For a constrained company the question belongs before Where to Play, not after.
Why does it make good OKRs? +
An OKR that deploys an idle asset or installs a disciplined commitment is low-spend and high-leverage, exactly the profile a resource-constrained company should bet its focus on, and the Key Results are easy to name because the asset's value was visible all along.
Reading about method isn't the same as running it. We install this system and build the capability that stays.