Analysis of the external competitive environment

Published on October 31, 2021   10 min
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0:00
Greetings and welcome to this session on "Strategy in Practice". My name is George Tovstiga, and I'm Professor of Strategy at EDHEC Business School in France. In this session, we examined deep-level analysis approaches for making sense of the external competitive context.
0:19
In this series on "Strategy in Practice", we differentiate between big picture analysis, which presents the comprehensive perspective on a particular strategic challenge, and deep level analysis, which focuses specifically on external and firm internal factors relevant to this challenge. Both levels of analysis complement each other of course. We always begin at the big level and then selectively delve into deep-level analysis on a needs-driven basis as guided by insight-driven strategic thinking.
0:57
First, some comments regarding deep level strategic analysis in general. Numerous models constructs, and frameworks have made their appearance in the strategic management literature. Some are more useful than others. We need to keep in mind that all frameworks of strategic analysis represent a degree of abstraction and simplification of reality. Moreover, models and frameworks of analysis inherently assume rationality in the contexts analyzed. In strategy practice, rationality is not necessarily a given. In strategy practice the challenges, is not a lack of frameworks, but rather knowing when and how to apply a framework and even more importantly, whether at all. Importantly in strategic analysis, the choice of framework and whether to apply it should be guided by insight-driven strategic thinking. With that said, the objective of this session is not to provide an exhaustible review of frameworks and models. One can find these in any strategy textbook. Rather, the intent of this session is to share only a few representative approaches; ones that I have found particularly useful in my own strategy research in practice and to illustrate their application.
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Analysis of the external competitive environment

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