SWOT
Business & Finance abbreviation · Management & Strategy
| Stands for | Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats |
|---|---|
| Categories | Business & Finance |
SWOT stands for Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, a management & strategy abbreviation.
Strategic planning tool that lays out an organization's internal strengths and weaknesses alongside the external opportunities and threats it faces, usually in a two-by-two grid. It opens many business plans, market-entry studies and annual strategy reviews as a summary of the current position before a course of action is chosen.
Example: Before the board offsite, each division head submitted a one-page SWOT covering pricing pressure, new competitors and supply risks.
Usage notes
Usually pronounced as a word ("swot"). The technique is commonly traced to work at the Stanford Research Institute in the 1960s, though its exact origin is disputed. A frequent criticism is that SWOT lists factors without ranking them; the TOWS matrix extends it by pairing strengths with opportunities and weaknesses with threats to generate concrete strategies.
Related abbreviations
More management & strategy abbreviations
- SMB – Small and midsize business
- SME – Small and medium-sized enterprise
- SOM – Serviceable obtainable market
- SOP – Standard operating procedure
- SPC – Statistical process control
- SSC – Shared services center
- TAM – Total addressable market
- TCO – Total cost of ownership
- TOC – Theory of constraints
- ToR – Terms of reference
- TPS – Toyota Production System
- TQM – Total quality management