Implications: going beyond SWOT analysis
The best data in the world is useless if you don't know how to figure out what it means for you in your next decision.
Our approach to analysis is what makes Competitive Futures so effective at providing insight to modern executives. It is not enough to describe trends on the future - you must also know what they mean in order to turn foresight into actionable intelligence.
After more than a decade of telling leaders about the long-term, we know how to show them the implications such strategic trends will have on their short term.
It comes down to a few simple questions:
- SO WHAT?
- WHAT IF...?
- WHAT ELSE?
This tends to be the fun part of this work - and also the hard part. Trust us, it is far easier to take industry forecasts and news reports on face value. After all, the thinking goes, if it was really important, the official news sources would tell me so! If you're lucky, that's all your competitors will be thinking. If you are working with Competitive Futures, you'll be doing far more - asking pertinent questions about what each shift in society, technology, and economics will mean for your industry and what to do about it TODAY.
And we don't mean the much-abused SWOT analysis method of assessing changes. In our experience, SWOT analysis is excellent at bringing out what we think about our industry right now. The temptation is all too great to discuss the strengths that we hope are real, the weaknesses we don't really want to discuss, opportunities that are only found in the current business models and threats that are too taboo to mention.
The Future Intelligence method will lead you to consider real questions for every trend:
- Does this mean more competitors are on the way?
- Is regulation going to increase in the near term?
- What will our customer base need in this future?
- Is demand for our product going to actually increase?
- Should we invest more in R&D based on this trend?
- Is our business model safe in the short-term? What about down the road?
- Do we need new distributors, or will we be selling direct?
They seem like such simple questions, but when applied systematically, we see our clients turn future disruptions into billion dollar opportunities.