Supporting Strategy

Supporting Strategy develops the concept of the strategic development process. The book begins by describing a balanced process for strategy development, spanning direction setting, strategy creation, rehearsal, evaluation and choice, leading to a continuous process of adopting strategic initiatives.  It then goes on to present a practical collection of frameworks, methods and models which both individually and in combination can be used to support strategy.  The collection includes:  drama theory, visioning methods, problem structuring methods, resource based view of strategy, SWOT / TOWS analysis, system dynamics, agent based modelling, scenario planning, decision and risk analysis, financial evaluation, real options, robustness analysis and performance measurement. 

This is a contributed work with original content written fro the book from leading academics in the field, including Maureen Meadows, Robert Berry, Jim Bryant, Adrian Caldart, Alberto Franco, Giles Hindle, Nigel Howard, Martin Kunc, Abhijit Mandal, Gilberto Montibeller, John Morecroft, Martin Murtland, Fernando Oliveira, and Efstathios Tapinos.

Frances O'Brien is an Associate Professor at Warwick Business School. her research interests include the development and use of approaches to support strategy development, in particular scenario planning and visioning methodologies, and the practice of combining OR & strategy tools by management teams. She holds a BSc (Joint Honours) in Mathematics and Classical Studies from Surrey University and an MSc in Operational research from Southampton University. She previously worked for the Operational research Group of Ford of Europe as a consultant providing modeling support on simulation, manpower planning and allocation studies. She is an active member of the UK Operational research Society for which she chairs the OR and Strategy Special Interest Group.

Robert Dyson is Professor of Operational research at Warwick business School. He has served as Dean of the Business School and Pro-Vice- Chancellor of the University of Warwick. He has also been Chair of the Committee of Professors of Operational research and President of the Operational Research Society. He researches and publishes in data envelopment analysis, performance measurement and OR and strategy, and is an Editor of the European Journal of Operational research. Prior to joining Warwick he worked for Pilkington plc.