ASSIGNMENT

What were the occasions for the SWOT analysis, the processes, and the results?

How much of a role did this SWOT analysis play in the company’s strategy-making practice in your experience? Explain in more detail.

Were you or the companies able to translate the list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats into a coherent strategy? If so, describe how.

What were the actions decided on the listed weaknesses? To correct/mitigate them or live with them as part of the trade-off in company strategy and why?

In your experience using SWOT for strategy making, was there a general recognition that weaknesses could also be strengths in certain circumstances and what was done with that? Explain more with examples.

Evaluate how useful the SWOT tool has been to strategy-making in your work experience. What did you realize as some of the issues and challenges with using SWOT analysis in strategy making?

2. Can you think of some examples where a company is innovative in finding and using its strengths despite apparent weaknesses to grow its business and market share? For instance, SpaceX lacked resources compared to NASA but was forced to innovate and come up with reusable rockets. Likewise, Red Bull when starting out, was too weak compared to Coke or Pepsi to attack them head-on in entering the soft drinks market, but targeted the unique niche of energy drinks using alternative ways to market and brand its products, e.g., distributing from bars initially and then on campus, sponsoring extreme sports, and so on.