SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis is a technique for assessing the four aspects – Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats – of a business. Each of these factors needs to be carefully examined to plan the growth of the organization by making the information gathered about a specific issue systematic and provides key information for defining strategies and positioning in the market. Such factors may be:

• Internal factors can be positive (strengths) or negative (weaknesses) and are manageable, as they can be controlled and if necessary modified or improved.
• External factors can be positive (opportunities) or negative (threats) and cannot be controlled. This technique works also on a personal level as it supports those who are looking for a job, or who already have one, in identifying their professional potential and weaknesses, and considering that it is often asked during a job interview.

SWOT analysis guides students in assessing a company’s competitive position and strategic planning development.
It facilitates in a simple way to get a realistic, fact-based, data-driven look at the strengths and weaknesses of an organization or initiatives.

SWOT technique works to emphasize students’ collaboration. It also helps to encourage students to think critically, be analytical and attentive to details.Besides, the analysis also helps students to identify areas of improvement and goal settings. Doing a SWOT analysis for a student helps him or her to achieve a clear picture of where he or she stands.

The application of the SWOT technique does not depend on the level of competence of the students and there is no problem to include students from different levels in this kind of analysis.

Step 1. Facilitator divides students into teams
Step 2. Facilitator writes and explains a well-defined and realistic problem to teams
Step 3. Facilitator asks the teams to brainstorm about the problem following the rules:
−  Ideas are offered in a rapid-fire manner, moving quickly from person to person (max 5 minutes)
−  Ideas are offered as single words or short phrases
−  Ideas are not evaluated or clarified (that will come in next steps)Each team focuses on a single factor area at a time. It is also possible to go back and forth on the 2 Internal and 2 External factors. It is preferable in each of the 4 factor areas, write no more than 15 and no less than 10 ideas.
Step 4. For each of the 4 factor areas, Facilitator asks each team to consolidate ideas examining duplicate points, to simplify the list as much as possible while still capturing distinct areas of strength, to clarify any ideas that participants have questions about
Step 5. Facilitator asks each team to identify and summarize the Top Three Strengths
Step 6. Facilitator asks each team to repeat previous steps for Weaknesses.
Step 7. Facilitator asks each team to repeat the previous step for Opportunities.
Step 8. Facilitator asks each team to repeat the previous step for Threats.
Step 9. Once each team finishes, it is possible to have a better understanding of the internal and external realities facing them, and chart and plan a course forward.

This technique has been used and is recursively used by many companies, including Coca Cola, Amazon, Google, Ferrero.
As part of the Business Organisation course of the Bachelor degree at the Department of Business and Management of the Luiss Guido Carli University, case studies are analysed relating to SWOT analyses carried out by companies in order to examine aspects related to the strategies adopted as a result.

In addition, the soft skills module introduces the technique for an effective personal SWOT Analysis.