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Description of SWOT Analysis

Description: The acronym SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The analysis tool provides a comprehensive overview of the opportunities and threats in strategic decisions. SWOT analyses provide a situational picture of the current basis for decision-making, or in which fields there is still potential for development. They are a good basis for the process of strategy development.

Use and benefit: The benefit lies in the transparent presentation of the internal strengths and weaknesses of an organization, which is reflected in the opportunities and risks of the market/environment. This makes it easier to focus on concrete activities, identify the need for action and provides a basis for strategic planning. One of the strengths of this analysis lies in its versatile application: It can be used as a basis for the discussion of strategic decisions, or as a possible development path for an organization, a business unit or a product. A prerequisite for its successful use is a clear definition of the object of investigation and the relevant context.

Process Flow: The analysis consists of an internal analysis and an external analysis. The internal analysis should make the strengths and weaknesses of an organization visible. Strengths of cities can be, for example, a large number of jobs, strong industry, technical know-how within the administration, etc. On the other hand, there are weaknesses such as high cost of living, scarce housing, poor public transport infrastructure, congested roads at rush hour, etc. Strengths and weaknesses are not always immediately apparent, so a questionnaire covering several perspectives (administrative perspective: what do we think we are good at; competitive perspective: what is our advantage over other cities; population perspective: why should they live and work in our city) helps.

The external analysis focuses on the environment and the resulting opportunities and risks with which the city is confronted. If the opportunities in the environment can be combined with the strengths of the city, this is a good starting position. Analytically, SWOT analyses can be divided into expected positive and negative effects and into internal and external sources. This creates a matrix like the one in the SWOT template provided for download