Strategy Maps

More than a decade ago, Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Nortonintroduced the Balanced Scorecard, a revolutionary performancemeasurement system that allowed organizations to quantifyintangible assets such as people, information, and customerrelationships. Then, in The Strategy-Focused Organization, Kaplanand Norton showed how organizations achieved breakthroughperformance with a management system that put the BalancedScorecard into action. Now, using their ongoing research with hundreds of BalancedScorecard adopters across the globe, the authors have created apowerful new tool-the "strategy map"-that enables companies todescribe the links between intangible assets and value creationwith a clarity and precision never before possible. Kaplan and Norton argue that the most critical aspect ofstrategy-implementing it in a way that ensures sustained valuecreation-depends on managing four key internal processes:operations, customer relationships, innovation, and regulatory andsocial processes. The authors show how companies can use strategymaps to link those processes to desired outcomes; evaluate,measure, and improve the processes most critical to success; andtarget investments in human, informational, and organizationalcapital.