TABLE OF CONTENTS This work is written with the hope that America [the United States], like Japan, can master the new challenges that we will respond with foresight rather than hindsight, with planning rather than crisis management, sooner rather than later.
Ezra F. Vogel (Japan as Number 1: Lessons for America, 1979)
Beyond the standard steps in a traditional business plan, strategic planning is geared especially to the objective of being competitive. The degree to which an individual, an enterprise, a nation or a region can produce goods and services that meet the tests of global marketplace while maintaining or increasing real income is even more dependent upon operational processes, not just products and markets. Of growing importance to products and markets are the questions of: 1) how the product is made; 2) how it is taken to the market; 3) how it is received, sold, serviced in the market; and 4) how it changes in relation to the changing environment.
How the manager as an individual, the firm as an organization, the industry as a sector, the state as an economic policymaker, and the region as an economic actor factor into these processes are crucial aspects of strategic planning for competitiveness. Planning per se means looking for threats and opportunities, strengths and weeknesses, and devising strategies to exploit or counter particular aspects of the overall environment. It is future oriented but...
