Strategic Analysis

Our analysts are commissioned by clients to undertake studies on matters relevant to their long-term competitiveness.

The issues we tackle are among the most difficult, sensitive, and consequential an organization can face. For this reason, our analyses are produced almost exclusively for executive-level decision makers.

Engagements range from small, “one-off” projects of several months to major strategic analysis programs lasting many years. We support clients in three areas of inquiry.

Understanding the Competition

Good strategy begins with an accurate reading of your competitive environment – what it looks like, where it’s heading, and what “winning” means.

  • How competitors think, act, and behave in different situations

  • Strategies, plans, and capabilities that competitors are developing for the future

  • New competitors or partners on the rise

  • Broad trends in technology and society and their implications

  • Plausible alternative futures and planning scenarios

  • Measures of effectiveness: the metrics or outcomes that matter most

Learning Where You Stand

Given your competitive environment, we assess where you are strong, where you are weak, and how well your strategic choices match emerging strategic realities.

  • Areas of advantage or disadvantage

  • Adequacy of existing investments, strategies, plans, and business models

  • Ability to achieve fundamental mission, purpose, and goals

  • Key uncertainties – the “known unknowns”

  • Preparedness for low-probability, high-impact events (market bubbles, major war, pandemic, etc.)

  • Challenges and opportunities

Seeking Primacy

We work with you from first principles to devise strategies for long-term dominance. Central to our brand of strategy is a focus on taking your competitors explicitly into account and achieving outsized gains with limited resources.  

  • New areas of advantage that aren’t easily countered

  • Asymmetric responses that render irrelevant a competitor’s biggest strategic investments

  • Reframing the terms of competition to turn an opponent’s strengths into weaknesses

  • Cost-imposing strategies that shape competitor behavior in your favor

  • Local overmatch against stronger competitors