The Strategic Planning Process
An overview of the strategic planning process including mission statement, environmental scan, strategy formulation, implementation, and control.

Business Vision and Mission Statement
Uses a framework proposed by Collins and Porras to describe three components of business vision including core values, core purpose, and visionary goals.

Hierarchical Levels of Strategy
Describes the role of strategy at the corporate level, business unit level, and functional or department level of the firm.

PEST Analysis
How a PEST analysis fits into the environmental scan. Provides some examples of the political, economic, social, and technological factors of the external macroenvironment.

SWOT Analysis
The role of SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) in strategic planning, including an overview of the TOWS matrix.

Competitive Advantage
Explains the concept of competitive advantage, using a diagram to illustrate how distinctive competencies and positional advantages create superior value.

Porter's Five Forces
Discusses the five forces, including rivalry, the threat of substitutes, buyer power, supplier power, and barriers to entry.

Porter's Generic Strategies
Introduces the three generic strategies of cost leadership, differentiation, and focus. Discusses issues related to multiple strategies, and compares the three strategies with respect to their ability to defend against the five industry forces.

Value Chain Analysis
The value chain as proposed by Porter. Describes value-creating primary and support activities and how value chain analysis can be useful in developing a competitive advantage.

Vertical Integration
The benefits and drawbacks of vertical integration, situational factors influencing the decision, and alternatives to vertical integration.

Horizontal Integration
The concept of horizontal integration, its advantages, and pitfalls.

Ansoff Matrix
Igor Ansoff's product-market matrix for corporate growth. Presents some considerations for selecting the optimal growth strategy.

BCG Growth-Share Matrix
Describes the portfolio planning matrix that classifies business units as Cash Cows, Stars, Question Marks, and Dogs.

GE / McKinsey Matrix
The GE / McKinsey portfolio matrix, including some factors that contribute to industry attractiveness and business unit strength.

Core Competencies
A summary of C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel's concept of core competencies and implications for corporate management.

Global Strategic Management
Discusses the sources of competitive advantage, the nature of competitive advantage in global industries, types of international strategy, analysis of global cost structures, globalization of service businesses, emerging economies, global knowledge management, and country management.

Porter's Diamond of National Advantage
Diagram of Michael Porter's model of national advantage with explanations of the individual points of the diamond framework and the diamond as a system, concluding with an example from the Japanese fax machine industry.

Foreign Market Entry Modes
A summary and comparison of the four major modes of foreign market entry, including exporting, licensing, joint venture, and foreign direct investment.