The Strategy map is one of the most important tools developed by Kaplan and Norton as part of their Balanced Scorecard approach. It is designed to provide a relatively simple way of distilling strategy into a collection of objectives and showing the causal relationships between objectives.

The Strategy map provides a tool for explaining and demonstrating how intangible assets, such as people, information systems, culture, processes etc, create customer outcomes and ultimately deliver tangible financial benefits for shareholders. A well constructed Strategy map should be