Some strategists (including Dave Aron in “The Essence of Strategy”) state that for any entity there is only one strategy. In some senses this is a terminology issue about what we mean by strategy.
For many, the “one strategy” rule seems too purist, as they are in organisations that have a sophisticated and well-developed Digital Strategy, Product Strategy, IT Strategy etc[1].
Perhaps the key is in the term “entity”? Rather than considering a corporation as a uniform entity and discussing how many strategies the entity may legitimately have, we can reframe the discussion in terms of seeing the entity as being defined by the strategy. A single organisation may include several “entities” – each defined by its having a strategy (this links to chapter that considers Identity as a key strategic question). The recognition of a need for a particular strategy within an organisation is tantamount to recognising there is a need for a a distinguishable entity within that organisation. This may not need to be an organisational unit or governance process – it may be quite abstract in its form. But there may be more than one strategy within an organisation if the organisation can be considered as comprising more than one entity – as pretty much all organisations do.
[1] Some refer to these as “sub-strategies” but those who create them generally prefer to call them strategies.