E3 - 6. Generating and Developing Strategic Options Flashcards
What 3 things does a resource audit do?
- Reveal strengths and weaknesses
- Understand core competencies
- Analyse how value is created
What is strategic fit?
Having the right resources to take advantage of opportunities that exist in the external environment
What are the 9 Ms of resources?
Manpower
Money
Machinery
Management
Markets
Materials
Methods and Processes
Management Information
Makeup and culture
What is foresight?
Rehearsing alternative futures for the organisation
What are the 5Cs of foresight?
- Communication
- Co-ordination
- Commitment
- Concentration on long term
- Consensus
What are the 3 main forecasting methods?
- Time series
- Correlation
- Regression Analysis
What is trend analysis?
Spotting trends or patterns in information and extrapolating it to the future
What is scenario planning?
Creating a range of plausible scenarios and the action plans required if they do occur, aimed at minimising surprises
What 5 things might scenario planning combine?
Known facts about the future, e.g.:
1. Demographics
2. Political
3. Industry
4. Reserve supplies
5. PEST trends
When is scenario planning most beneficial?
When the environment is complex and dynamic
What are the 6 key steps in scenario planning?
- Define scope of activity (timescale, region, product etc)
- Identify key stakeholders
- Indentify trends, uncertainties and causes of distruption
- Construct initial scenarios
- Check for plausibility and reduce to 2/3
- Use the scenarios to formulate a strategy
What are the 4 main advantages of scenario planning?
- Deeper understanding of environment
- Indicates what needs to be monitored
- Encourages environmental scanning
- Encourages creative thought
What are the 4 main disadvantages of scenario plannning?
- Expensive
- Distraction from main business
- Difficult to take action due to vested interest
- Many scenarios won’t come true
What is visioning?
Seeing an image of the future goal of the organisation and coming up with a plan to get to that future
What is morphological analysis?
Systematic investigation of all the components of large scale problems, products or processes