Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Company A's major competitor, Company B, sang a similar song. It did not have such an engine either, even though it had an excellent front-end section. Companies A and B created a joint venture to meet the customer's manufacturing requirements. Years ago, two fierce competitors forming such an alliance would have been inconceivable. Yet, today's companies are envisioning business designs that work best for the customer, whether they own all the production assets or they have to partner with a major competitor to get the job done.
Many companies have trouble thinking outside the box to envision future business success.
Most contemporary managers have worked with SWOT, which is frequently used early in the visioning process to provide planning context. The SWOT analysis has many positive attributes as a tool helping an organization understand both its strengths and weaknesses, as well as key issues in the organization's environment, e.g., its opportunities and threats. SWOT has a major weakness in these times of radical change, however. Regardless of how SWOT is used in visioning and strategic planning, the organization usually comes out with an organization-centric vision that limits its possibilities to the business space directly adjacent to the company's current operations. To make matters worse, many SWOT practitioners actually use the four SWOT ingredients in the order of the acronym.