Assessing the Business Environment: Guidelines for Strategists

To have a sound strategy a company must be able to conduct a sound environmental assessment (EA). Executives and managers in all industries need to be able to analyze and anticipate trends in the economy as well as their industries and target markets. But guidance on effective approaches to environmental assessment is scattered among the literature on everything from economics, to marketing, general management and strategy. Meanwhile most executives are uncertain about both current and future prospects for their own commercial environment. Addressing the need for proven EA guidelines, Roney's book offers practical approaches that can help planners develop models detailing the trends, forecasts, and alternative futures which are integral to environmental assessment and thus critical to effective strategic planning.

Roney begins with a broad description of the environmental assessment practices of American business, and how these practices have created significant competitive advantages for U.S. businesses. After reviewing approaches to assessing a company's economy, its industry and the markets it serves, Roney analyzes the forecasting methods themselves. He focuses on assessing uncertainty and alternative futures through the use of scenario forecasting and contingency planning. His concluding chapter summarizes the environmental conditions that can be defined with reasonable accuracy, describing the range of techniques that can be used in the assessment process. His appendix, an information tool kit, provides a variety of important reference materials. Included are tables to cross-reference SIC codes and the new NAICS classification categories; projections of demographic trends for the U.S. and other industrialized nations; economic and demographic data describing the composition of world markets, plus additional aids that strategic planners and corporate management with other responsibilities will find invaluable.