Publisher's acknowledgements Introduction    The Strategy Pyramid    How to use this book    Business vs corporate strategy   Section 1: Knowing Your Business    Overview    Essential tools    1.    Identifying key segments    2.    Issue Analysis (Minto)    Example: British Aerospace’s super segment    Useful tools    3.    The 80/20 Principle (Pareto)    4.    The Segmentation Mincer (Koch)    5.    5C Situation Analysis    6.    SWOT Analysis   Section 2: Setting Goals and Objectives    Overview    Essential tools    7.    Setting long-term goals    8.    Setting SMART objectives    9.    Maximising shareholder value    10.  Balancing stakeholder interests    Example: Which goals count for RBS?    Useful tools    11.  Creating Shared Value (Porter & Kramer)    12.  Economic Value Added (Stern Stewart)    13.  Balanced Scorecard and Strategy Map (Kaplan & Norton)    14.  Core Ideology (Collins & Porras)    15.  Business as a Community (Handy)   Section 3: Forecasting Market Demand    Overview    Essential tools    16.  Sizing the market and Marketcrafting (Evans)    17.  The HOOF Approach to Demand Forecasting (Evans)    Example: Galileo’s Hiccup in Market Demand    Useful tools    18.  Smoothing through moving averages    19.  The Income Elasticity of Demand    20.  Survey methods of demand forecasting    a. Survey of customers’ intentions    b.    Salesforce estimation method    c. The Delphi method    d.    Pilot test marketing    21.  Statistical methods of demand forecasting    a. Trend projection    b.    Regression analysis    c. Barometric method (NBER)   Section 4: Gauging Industry Competition    Overview    Essential tools    22.  The Five Forces (Porter)    23.  Assessing customer purchasing criteria    24.  Deriving key success factors    Example: Woolworths succumbs to the five forces    Useful tools    25.  Weighing economies of scale    26.  Corporate environment as a sixth force    27.  Complements as a sixth force (Brandenburger & Nalebuff)    28.  PESTEL analysis   Section 5: Tracking Competitive Advantage    Overview    Essential tools    29.  Rating competitive position    30.  The Resource and Capability Strengths/Importance Matrix (Grant)    Example: Cobra Beer’s clever competitive advantage    Useful tools    31.  The Value Chain (Porter)    32.  The Product/Market Matrix (Ansoff)      33.  Cross,Spider and Comb Charts    34.  Benchmarking    35.  Structured interviewing   Section 6: Targeting the Strategic Gap    Overview    Essential

“A fabulous compendium of tools, woven into a no-nonsense strategy process. An enormously helpful book, invaluable to novices and experts alike.” Marcus Alexander, Professor of Strategy and Enterprise at London Business School   “A really practical guide to strategy development. All the relevant tools are explained in detail, but highlighting the essential ones is a master stroke that will save essential hours!” Adrian Beecroft, Chairman, Dawn Capital    The strategy tools you need for your business to succeed   Let Key Strategy Tools be your guide to developing a winning strategy for your firm.  Cherry-pick the most useful approaches for your business and create a robust strategy that withstands investor scrutiny and becomes your roadmap to success.   Covering 88 tools – approaches, models, schools and techniques – framed within an innovative strategy development process, the strategy pyramid, this user-friendly manual takes you through each step of the process.  Whether analysing your market, building competitive advantage or addressing risk and opportunity, you’ll find the strategic thinking tools you need at every stage.   Following in the footsteps of the hugely successful Key Management Models and Key Performance Indicators, this book delivers professional-level information in the practical and accessible framework synonymous with the Key series.

I wish I had thought of the idea for this book. Or could have done it so well! The selection of topics is excellent, the commentary astute, and the explanations simple and engaging. Richard Koch, entrepreneur, co-founder L.E.K. Consulting, author of The 80/20 Principle   This is a new, very practical and delightfully pithy approach to strategy making. It offers a fabulous compendium of the major strategy tools, woven into a no-nonsense, step-by-step strategy process. An enormously refreshing and helpful book, invaluable to novices and strategy experts alike. Marcus Alexander, Professor of Strategy and Enterprise, London Business School   A really practical guide to strategy development. All the relevant tools are explained in detail, but highlighting the essential ones is a master stroke that will save endless hours! Adrian Beecroft, Chairman, Dawn Capital and former Senior Managing Partner, Apax Partners   A comprehensive inventory of the tools and analytical frameworks of strategy. The key value of this book is the guidance it offers on how to apply these tools – and this is rooted in Vaughan Evans’ deep experience of working with them. Robert M. Grant, ENI Professor of Strategic Management, Bocconi University, Milan   This is an interesting and usable book. Evans helps you navigate through the myriad of theories and toolkits on business strategy with a highly practical approach. Whether your business is a start-up, an SME or a multi-national, use it to help you devise a coherent strategy. Anthony Karibian, CEO, Bonline Ltd and co-founder, Euroffice Ltd and XLN Telecom Ltd (both exited)   Everything you need from a tool kit, comprehensive, practical and high added value. Mike Garland, Partner and Head of Portfolio Group, Permira Advisers LLP   This book really works. I hope it becomes a standard for every management team seeking private equity; it would certainly make my life much easier. David Williamson, Managing Director, Nova Capital Management   A broad yet accessible explanation of the range of strategy tools actually used by businesses. Whether you are an experienced strategy specialist or newer to the field, you will find this an invaluable guide. Robert Samuelson, Executive Director Group Strategy, Virgin Media   Strategy is at the heart of a successful business – with this excellent book, Vaughan Evans has provided an extremely clear roadmap to achieving that success. James Courtenay, Global Head, Advisory & Infrastructure Finance, Standard Chartered Bank   A very satisfying read. This is a guide to strategy which covers all the necessary ground in a very straightforward and no nonsense way, employing a number of good real life examples of strategy in practice. It is written by a true expert and will prove an invaluable tool for anybody involved in the running of a business. Vince O’Brien, Director, Montagu Private Equity and Past Chairman of the British Venture Capital Association   It can be difficult to keep up to date with all the latest developments in the world of strategy, let alone how one guru’s work blends with those of his predecessors. Vaughan Evans has done it for us. He gives us a thorough refresher course, with each leading strategy theory, model or matrix presented as a tool in the manager’s toolkit – and carefully placed in each step of the strategy process. Each tool is described in a lucid and vivid style seldom found in a business manual. Refreshing and invaluable for a DIY strategist. Christine Harvey, former Director of Business Analysis and Planning, GlaxoSmithKline R&D &nbs