SWOT analysis

Attributed to Albert S. Humphrey and to the Harvard policy group · 1965

Internal strengths and weaknesses set against external opportunities and threats.

Its place in the frameworkMarket Core›Market Opportunities

What it does

Its lasting contribution is the axis nobody names: two of the boxes are about you and two are about the world, and an opportunity only counts if a strength can actually reach it. Used as four lists it is nearly worthless; used as a set of pairings — which strength serves which opportunity, which weakness is exposed to which threat — it still earns its place.

Reach for it when: To connect what a business has to what the market is doing, once both have been established separately.
Where it stops: It is the most abused tool in strategy. Filled in as four columns of adjectives, it generates agreement and no decisions.

Edmund P. Learned, C. Roland Christensen, Kenneth R. Andrews & William D. Guth, Business Policy: Text and Cases, Irwin, 1965; also attributed to Albert S. Humphrey at SRI.

Why it sits at Market Opportunities

Where demand exists that the organisation is not yet serving — sized honestly, judged on fit as well as attractiveness, and narrowed to a list short enough to act on.

A model is only useful when you reach for it at the right moment. This one answers a question that arises here — so it is filed here, and nowhere else. These are the working areas it serves:

SizingThe addressable-market distinction between total, serviceable and obtainable market, and bottom-up sizing as the check on top-down figures.
Growth and directionDiffusion-of-innovation work on adoption curves, and the industry-lifecycle literature on how attractiveness changes by stage.
Opportunity assessmentAnsoff’s product-market matrix for the fit question, and the market-attractiveness screens used in portfolio planning.
The shortlistStrategic-choice literature on the discipline of deciding what not to do as the substance of a strategy.

All of Market Opportunities

What it touches elsewhere

Nothing in a business is decided on its own. A conclusion reached with this model at Market Opportunities lands in these other cores, whether or not anyone follows it there.

Business CoreAn opportunity requires a value proposition and the capacity to serve it, which is where fit is actually settled.
Goal CoreA pursued opportunity becomes a long term goal or it remains an observation.
CompetitorsAn unserved opportunity is unusual; establishing why nobody is serving it is part of the assessment.
Time CoreWhether the opportunity is available now is a separate question from whether it exists.

Filed at the same place

These answer questions that arise at Market Opportunities too. Where they disagree with this one, the disagreement is the useful part.

PESTEL analysisA checklist of the outside forces a business does not control: political, economic, social, technological, environmental, legal.
TAM, SAM and SOMThe whole market, the part your model can serve, and the part you could realistically win.
The product life cycleProducts pass through introduction, growth, maturity and decline, and what to do about one depends entirely on where it is.

Elsewhere in Market Core

These are other people’s models, named here so you can go to the source and use them properly. The Omnigoal is not affiliated with their authors and is not endorsed by them; nothing of theirs is reproduced here — no canvas, no diagram, no wording. Each is described in our own words, with the originator credited, because the framework is a place to put thinking, not a replacement for the people who did it. Model names and trademarks belong to their respective owners and are used here only to refer to the work itself.

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