High-Level Strategic Analysis

Strategic analysis is a sense-making exercise. When a firm faces a competitive threat or perceives an opportunity for growth, usually the response is to analyse its circumstances. Strategic analysis addresses challenges that have a significant potential impact on a firm’s competitive position and comprises a systematic approach for making sense of a firm’s competitive context and trategic position. In this book, we distinguish between high-level and micro-level analysis. The high-level strategic analysis introduced in this chapter provides a comprehensive perspective that integrates both purpose and context of a challenge. Micro-analysis, which we examine in Chap. 4 , focuses on contextual factors only. High-level analysis positions the ‘what’s strategically at stake’ at the core of a strategic challenge within the greater context within it presents itself, which comprises the firm’s relevant external environment and firm-internal circumstances. Importantly, the ‘what’s competitively at stake’ component of high-level analysis provides the motivation, rationale, and thus purpose in strategic analysis. Three high-level analysis frameworks of analysis are introduced in this chapter: the ‘5 strategy building blocks’ (5-SBBs), ‘unique competing space’ (UCS), and the value proposition (VP). The three frameworks are congruent but serve different purposes in strategic analysis. The chapter concludes with a reflection on the characteristics, application, and limitations of these analysis approaches.