“Analysis Is the Critical Starting Point of Strategic Thinking” – Kenichi Ohmae. What Variables Interfere so Often with Our Ability to Start the Analysis Aspect of Strategic Thinking? How Important Is the Analysis?

3. Industry and market analysis, competitor analysis, and social analysis are examples of which step in the strategic planning process? Analysis of external opportunities and threats

One frequently asked question in business today that is least answered is, as stated by David Chaudron, PhD (2003), “What can we do to make our business flourish, survive and grow?” With the rapid changes in technology and the rise in the globalization of markets, we must have a game plan in place for adjusting to these changes. It has become increasingly difficult to predict what is going to happen, and there are thousands of obstacles and opportunities along the way. To add to the confusion, there are thousands of products, solutions and methods for dealing with these changes. With many brands, sizes and varieties it is very difficult to choose what is best for your organization. Add to that,

Due to the growing competition and diminishing market share, companies are opting for different strategies to achieve their survival objectives as well as growth. Companies are thus executing grand strategies to provide their businesses with a clear direction for its strategic actions. These strategies, therefore, aim at both short term and long term sustainability and growth, and they include innovation, market development, product development, and concentration.

Strategic planning involves taking information from the environment and deciding upon an organizational mission, and upon objectives, strategies, and a strategic architecture. There are many different ways to go about deciding on your mission. Michael Porter, a researcher from Harvard, had a few ways for developing frameworks for developing an organization’s strategy.

Mintzberg, H. Research . (1972) On strategy-making', Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Academyo f Management,N Minneapolis.

Strategic planning is the management activity of an organization to achieve the organization’s goals through setting priorities, focusing activities and resources, working of employees and stakeholders, agreement establishment, and evaluation of the organization’s direction (Balanced Scorecard Institute, 2015).

In today’s highly competitive market, the continuous changes that are occurring in the social, politic and economic environment create serious challenges in the corporate world. Corporations cannot afford to do business as usual if they want to remain in the game and be successful. In order to achieve their goals and objectives, they need to evolve, adapt, learn and apply different new strategies that will help them secure long-run success and performance. Among those strategies, we are going to discuss ten of them and their advantages in connection with corporation’s goals and objectives.

Strategic Planning is the process of developing and maintaining a strategic fit between the organizations goals and capabilities as well as emerging market conditions and opportunities. This process begins with a clear company mission statement. However, this is only a small piece of a dynamic and perpetual process. Other activities involved with strategic planning also include setting supporting organizational objectives, designing a sound product mix as well as coordinating functional strategies. Strategic planning works to set the groundwork for the rest of the subsidiary planning functions in the company.

integrated view towards the firm, and then synthesizing the learning into an image of the

Strategic thinking involves using ethical and moral reasoning to think about the future of an organization. This type of thinking usually starts about changes that you have noticed in the organizational climate, which are usually called mental models. Mental models are simplified understandings or representations of the phenomena that the organization encounters. These type of models can tell a strategic leader what is and is not important to the organization, what they do and do not like, what they should and should not notice. By knowing this, they include understandings of how things work and what are expected

Strategic planning involves making decisions about the organization’s long-term goals and strategies and how the organization decides to implement their goals (Bateman, Snell, Konopaske, pg. 113). Strategies help organizations to have a clear perspective on how to go about accomplishing the goals they have in place. All organizations have a clear vision of what their mission and purpose as a company is, they know how to fulfill the mission, vision, and purpose and they know how to ensure that they accomplish all their goals. However, the route the organization takes to define these things determines how effective they will be.

All business needs to take action which helps them keep good position on the market. Before taken any action analysis has to be made. Answers and data which were obtained during analysis can help chose strategies, which help achieve objectives.

Porter (1980) created a model which considers five important forces (Porters five forces) which aims to establish a profitable and sustainable position against the forces that determine industry competition, therefore position themselves within it and differentiating themselves where necessary in order to strategically gain a competitive advantage - this model gives vision of: Threat of new entrants, Threat of substitute products or services, Bargaining power of customers , Bargaining power of suppliers and Intensity of competitive rivalry (Porter 1980). Using models and academic theory like this allows strategy to be formed through a rational and an analytical process. Chandlers (1962) cited in (Lomash 2003) suggests the analytical process is about the determination of long-term clear goals, adopting actions to achieve these goals and then building the resources within the organization around this strategy in order to ensure it succeeds. Johnson (2005), likewise, simply suggested a three step approach to strategy - analysis, choice and implementation which goes hand-in-hand with intended strategy.

The strategic management process is sometimes improperly perceived as a unidirectional flow of objectives, strategies and decision parameters from management to the employees. In fact, the process should be highly interactive since it is designed to stimulate input from creative, skilled and knowledgeable people working at every level of the business.

Is analysis such as strategic analysis important? Of course it is. Strategic analysis is just a piece of an intelligent process in managing. This process conducts research on the organization and the business environment within which an organization operates. This paper will concentrate its efforts on strategic alternatives at the corporate, business, and functional levels. First, strategic choice will be defined. Then, this paper will focus on the strategic options available to companies at the business level. Companies select business strategies to obtain Sustained Competitive Advantage against competitors.