page_title: Strategic management
section_title: SWOT analysis
hierarchical_section_title: Strategic management / Concepts and frameworks / SWOT analysis
context_page_description: In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's top managers on behalf of owners, based on consideration of resources and an assessment of the internal and external environments in which the organization operates. Strategic management provides overall direction to an enterprise and involves specifying the organization's objectives, developing policies and plans to achieve those objectives, and then allocating resources to implement the plans. Academics and practicing managers have developed numerous models and frameworks to assist in strategic decision-making in the context of complex environments and competitive dynamics. Strategic management is not static in nature; the models often include a feedback loop to monitor execution and to inform the next round of planning.
  Michael Porter identifies three principles underlying strategy:
  creating a "unique and valuable [market] position"
  making trade-offs by choosing "what not to do"
  creating "fit" by aligning company activities with one another to support the chosen strategy
context_section_description: By the 1960s, the capstone business policy course at the Harvard Business School included the concept of matching the distinctive competence of a company (its internal strengths and weaknesses) with its environment (external opportunities and threats) in the context of its objectives. This framework came to be known by the acronym SWOT and was "a major step forward in bringing explicitly competitive thinking to bear on questions of strategy". Kenneth R. Andrews helped popularize the framework via a 1963 conference and it remains commonly used in practice.
caption: A SWOT analysis, with its four elements in a 2×2 matrix.