Strategy in Practice: A Practitioner's Guide to Strategic Thinking, 3rd Edition

Chapter 5High-Level, “Big-Picture” Strategic Analysis

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

—Albert Einstein

In this Chapter, We:

• examine the purpose and role of high-level strategic analysis in strategic sense making;
• introduce two high-level frameworks of strategic analysis – the value proposition and unique competing space frameworks – and discuss their application toward generating strategically relevant insight;
• examine how these high-level frameworks can guide the overall strategic process through aggregation and integration of a number of individual approaches, models, and frameworks;
• close with a final analysis framework, the opportunity–response framework, which addresses the “when?” question related to strategic scheduling.

The purpose of high-level, big-picture strategic analysis is to probe and, ultimately, to provide a “big-picture” mapping of the firm's strategic position in its greater competitive context. Good strategic analysis is purpose driven; high-level analysis therefore necessarily aligns with the context of a specific strategic challenge. A “big-picture” analysis encompasses three fundamental elements and brings these into juxtaposition: (1) the strategic value at stake – i.e. the value consideration at the core of the strategic challenge in question; (2) the firm's external competitive context relevant to that challenge; and (3) the firm's internal competitive context relevant to the strategic challenge. Central ...