Analysing the present to understand the future

When firms set their strategic, long term aims, they need to have some kind of vision of what the future may hold.

Business Studies is often packed with suggested tools for firms to frame their analysis of the present - and possible future.

If you've done any strategy (especially at A2 level) you may have come across some (or all) of the following tools:

• SWOT
• PEST (or PESTLE if you prefer)
• The Product Life Cycle (often supported by other ways of analysing product portfolio, like the Boston Matrix)
• Ansoff's Matrix
• Time Series Analysis (there's a nice article on this here)
• Decision trees
• Porter's Forces model
• ... and others, I'm sure

It can be a lot of fun to pick up on these strategic perspectives and try to think how you might lead a firm towards an (often uncertain) future. As so often, the BBC have a really interesting article on future 'megatrends' and it's well worth reading if you might like to anticipate how the world might look very different in 10 or 20 years...