iPhone Giveaway of the Day - Strategizer

Every executive knows how important the SWOT analysis for every decision maker in his organization, in that regard, we had come up with this interesting app to facilitate the work of mangers to come up with their best strategies, tactics, and action. these outputs are based on connecting their ideas about their organizations.

In the strategic management literature, there were a consensus that the strategic thinking is all about matching and connecting internal and external environments together, in the light of this principle, management scholars had come up with an interesting tool that can generate innovative and correct strategies for any organization, group or even individuals; this tool is known as TOWS matrix, TOWS matrix is an advanced and systematic use of the well-known SWOT analysis.

In SWOT, strategists will extract the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats to their organizations, whereas in TOWS they will trigger their minds to match internal environment factors (Strengths and Weaknesses) with an external environmental factors (Opportunities and Threats); by applying these connections, the outcome may become one of the following aspects:

1. S-O Strategies (Connect Strengths with Opportunities)
Use Strengths points to take advantage of Opportunities.

2. W-O Strategies (Connect Weaknesses with Opportunities)
Improve internal Weaknesses points by taking advantage of external Opportunities.

3. S-T Strategies (Connect Strengths with Threats)
Use Strengths points to avoid or reduce the impact of external Threats.

4. W-T Strategies (Connect Weaknesses with Threats)
Try to avoid Weaknesses and Threats points together.

A good metaphor of describing above categories is an eagle; its head is S-O; this head will be responsible of monitoring external opportunities and decide to go in that direction. S-T, W-O both represent the wings, without balance of both of them an eagle cannot with stand against wind and clouds. and the last thing is W-T, which is like eagle’s tail; must be directed at certain angle up or down, and without taking care of it, an eagle cannot reach its destination and take advantage of it.

This little app is seamlessly designed to trigger one’s mind to define Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats for any concerned organization, and then match all of them to come up with S-O, S-T, W-O, and W-T strategies using an interesting tool of iOS UIPickerView; after finishing the matching, you can send the points and strategies by emails in TOWS matrix format.

As the concept of this app is generating ideas based on structured thinking of the users, and as many businesses rely heavily on the intellectual capital of the staff. I believe that this app will generate a huge benefit to any organization once it is implemented as a communication and brainstorming tool for all every decision maker in the organization.

For more about this technique, you are advised to read one of the following published articles:

1.Analyzing the Competitive Advantages and Disadvantages of Germany with the TOWS Matrix-An Alternative to Porter's Model http://www.usfca.edu/fac_staff/weihrichh/docs/germany.pdf

2. 3. Daimler-Benz's Move towards the Next Century with the TOWS Matrix
http://www.usfca.edu/fac_staff/weihrichh/docs/benz.pdf