Key Strategy Tools

Vaughan Evans has been a strategy consultant since the mid-1980s, working with a broad range of corporate clients, from small firms to global giants, and with over 50 financier clients, both structured lenders and private equity. For the last ten years he has been independent, specialising in business strategy, business planning and strategic due diligence. Vaughan is a graduate of Downing College, Cambridge and a Sloan Fellow with distinction of London Business School. He has written four previous books including the bestseller The Financial Times Essential Guide to Writing a Business Plan.

• 1 Identifying key segments2 Issue analysis (Minto)3 The 80/20 principle (Pareto)4 The segmentation mincer (Koch)5 5C situation analysis6 SWOT analysis (Andrews)7 Setting long-term goals8 Setting SMART objectives9 Maximising shareholder value10 Balancing stakeholder interests (corporate social responsibility)11 Creating shared value (Porter and Kramer)12 Economic value added (Stern Stewart)13 Balanced scorecard and strategy map (Kaplan and Norton)14 Core ideology (Collins and Porras)15 Obliquity (Kay)16 Business as a community (Handy)17 Sizing the market and marketcrafting (Evans)18 The HOOF approach to demand forecasting (Evans)19 Income elasticity of demand20 The five forces (Porter)21 Assessing customer purchasing criteria22 Deriving key success factors23 Weighing economies of scale24 Corporate environment as a sixth force25 Complements as a sixth force (Brandenburger and Nalebuff)26 PESTEL analysis27 Rating competitive position28 The resource and capability strengths/importance matrix (Grant)29 The value chain (Porter)30 The product/market matrix (Ansoff)31 The attractiveness/advantage matrix (GE/McKinsey)32 The growth/share matrix (BCG)33 Profiling the ideal player34 Identifying the capability gap35 The strategic condition matrix (Arthur D. Little)36 The 7S framework (McKinsey)37 The opportunity/vulnerability matrix (Bain/L.E.K.)38 Value proposition design (Ostervalder and Pigneur)39 Three generic strategies (Porter) and the fatal bias (Goddard)40 The experience curve (BCG)41 Strategic repositioning and shaping profit growth options42 Making the strategic investment decision43 Blue ocean strategy (Kim and Mauborgne)44 Fast second (Markides)45 Beating the commodity trap (d'Aveni)46 Discovery-driven growth (McGrath)47 Lean startups (Blank and Ries)48 The tipping point (Gladwell)49 The price elasticity of demand (Marshall)50 The strategic triangle (Ohmae)51 The 4Ps marketing mix (McCarthy) and the purple cow (Godin)52 Product quality and satisfaction (Kano)53 The hierarchy of needs (Maslow)54 The bottom of the pyramid (Prahalad and Leiberthal)55 Reverse innovation (Govindarajan)56 Business process redesign (Hammer and Champy)57 Outsourcing58 Optimising the corporate portfolio59 Creating value from mergers, acquisitions and alliances60 The corporate restructuring hexagon (McKinsey)61 Creating parenting value (Goold, Campbell and Alexander)62 Core competences (Hamel and Prahalad)63 Strategically valuable resources (Collis and Montgomery)64 Strategically distinctive resources (Barney)65 Distinctive capabilities (Kay)66 Distinctive competences (Snow and Hrebiniak)67 Dynamic capabilities (Teece, Pisano and Shuen)68 Deliberate and emergent strategy (Mintzberg)69 Integrative thinking (Martin)70 Stick to the knitting (Peters and Waterman)71 Profit from the core (Zook)72 The market-driven organisation (Day)