SWOT Analysis of SWOT Analysis

Where is this company going? Who are our competitors? How do we increase market penetration?

SWOT analysis, a diagram listing Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, is a great high level management strategy tool in business. It doesn't tell you what to do when there's a problem, it just helps you describe a situation.

It forces you to make explicit both good and bad, and the internal and external features of your situation. As a graphic model, it puts like things in the same place and gives a well-defined, limited structured place to put them. You can use it for the highest level (for an entire company) or for a very low level (one particular product), or even for the most technical of things (should I learn a particular technical skill?). It's not for everything and it doesn't do everything for the things it is for.

Here's a template of a SWOT analysis chart with the kinds of questions that go in each:

(from http://www.conceptdraw.com/How-To-Guide/swot-analysis-matrix-template)

There are two axes, either internal or external, and the quality either good or bad. It's probably bad form to mention the negative of an item from the positive side, sort of non-creative and redundant. Threats can be competitors, but it may also be useful to do an entire SWOT on a competitor for true comparison sake.

There are many examples and explanations of SWOT analysis. Here's a simple example for a bank:

(from http://www.theasianbanker.com/benchmarking/our-tools)

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any examples of real  SWOTs (from the real world), so a made up academic example will have to do.

So now the point of this is to judge SWOT by some judgement method. Since SWOT analysis is exactly one of those methods, let's turn it on itself. I (and other sites) have given a wordy analysis, so I'll just give the SWOT analysis as is without any additional commentary.

Internalities

Strengths
- well-defined, simple structure, limits issues to judge
- simple to understand
- quick to complete, low cost
- makes explicit for all ideas of things to do (externalities) and how well you can expect to do them (internals)
- doesn't need too much knowledge of the company to create details

Weaknesses
- no ranking of importance of items
- too superficial, oversimplification of issues, shallow
- many details left out, lots of context left out
- not operational, doesn't help with figuring out what to do
- only binary, hard to include important but multifaceted issues
- balance implied but not necessary


Externalities

Opportunities
- many people don't know of this method
- lo-tech, doesn't need (computer) tools to fill out
- can be used for non-business situations

Threats
- there are many other forms of business analysis (Gannt charts, weighted average, competency chart)
- easily overlooked because so shallow
- results often overlooked, swamped by other methods

So there's not much that can be said reasonably about opportunities or threats here. SWOT is an analysis method, not a startup. So I guess that's another weakness of SWOT, that  it's not applicable in more contexts. Externalities are mostly relevant in gaming situations where there are true competitors vying for resources (like in a business situation). Opportunities and threats seem geared almost directly to a sales or niche competition (greenfield vs brownfield, red ocean vs blue), how to use one's strengths to pursue an opportunity.

One thing missing from this analysis of analysis, which doesn't fit in the restrictions of this analysis, is the range of competitors. It's a detail mentioned but not made explicit. I feel like it would be a great lack if those details aren't mentioned here even though it doesn't fit within the constraints of the academic problem.

The competitors, or rather alternatives to SWOT analysis are:
- TOWS - builds on top of SWOT, pairs of SWOT quadrants
- SOAR - the positive version of SWOT, Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations and Results
- Growth Share Matrix - scatter plot of businesses by market share vs growth rate
- Gap Analysis - comparison of actual with potential performance

Surely there are other more substantive alternatives to SWOT?