1. Investigating Entrepreneurial Opportunities
SWOT
Professor Colin Gray
One of the most widely used tools in business decision-making is the SWOT analysis –
identifying the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of a proposal. It can be
used in helping to analyse the key factors in buying new resources, setting a new marketing
strategy and also in assessing the likely viability of an entire new venture. Deceptively simple
to understand, the SWOT can sometimes be tricky to apply in practice - especially with
factors that can have both strong and weak features; or where factors change over time. How
did Julian research the strengths and weaknesses of his idea and how did he make the
SWOT analysis relevant to his business?
Julian Brower
The SWOT analysis is one of the leading bits of my box because that’s really the one that
decides whether I've got a serious chance of success. Um - the SWOT analysis for me
through a process of Internet, through a process of mixing with people, discussions, dropped
out a number of factors that I hadn't even considered and that would have destroyed my
business. So I went out and I actually had a look at the um strengths of my project and I
decided whether I had a serious chance of success and I decided that I did have a chance of
success because this was a new idea that wasn’t being used and a number of outlets were
available. The shops were available and I spoke to the shop assistants and I said you know
are you interested in this idea and they all said yes, we’d love it. If you're giving us free
money and all we have to do is sell you an A1 size sheet in the front window and we don’t
have to do anything, that’s a fantastic idea. I then had a look at the weaknesses and the sort
of weaknesses that came out well I'm giving them a thousand quids worth of my assets.
What if they break it? What if the electricity goes off? We only give them money for when we
are being advertised. What if we get no advertising on the boards? What if we find that they
cover the poster with some brand new offer for cheese – whatever? These are the sorts of
things that came out in the weaknesses you know. Interaction by local shop makers. What
about vandalism? There's a thousand quids worth of brand new television set sitting in a front
window of a village shop to vandalise. These are the sort of weaknesses that came out of it.
I looked then at how to sort of develop the opportunities and then went on to the threats.
Each time I highlighted areas that I hadn't even considered. And I felt it was so important to
have this box in which I could filter out what were you know SWOT is absolutely vital in doing
that.
One of the other areas I looked at in terms of threats was transaction costs and opportunity
costs. Opportunity costs were if you spend time developing one area - an idea how much is it
costing you not to develop another area? For instance you might want to be spending time
selling into the local shop market but you’re not selling it into the small medium enterprise
market. So how much is it costing you to do that? And I developed that in great detail as a
threat. And also the transaction costs. How much does it cost for me to get from the
customers right through to the board and every single element of the process in between. And
with the threats I found a number of different places where that cost could go up. But without
the SWOT I wouldn’t even have considered that. I wouldn’t have had a formalised approach
to it. It's just having like a little sort of goal at the end of the line and knowing right I've got to
get to there. How am I going to get to there? I've got a problem; I've got a threat here. How
am I going to obviate that threat? So out of the threats came more opportunities like a little
circle in a way. The whole thing linked together.
Professor Colin Gray
How and when did you determine that the strengths outweighed the weaknesses and indeed
the opportunities outweighed the threats?

2. Julian Brower
I think there was a bit of a gut feeling to decide whether something was actually strong
enough to obviate any potential damage um but the other thing I would say is when you come
up with a threat you can also come up with a solution to that threat as well. When you can
clearly define a threat and find out where it's coming from you will be surprised how your
entrepreneurial brain looks for a way around it. So turning a threat into an opportunity – it may
start off as an insurmountable waterfall to get up but actually if you've got an entrepreneurial
brain you will develop a solution to that threat and that will involve a bit of research. You may
go on the Internet. You might find that there's no connection. In my case it was how am I
going to get connected from the main computer system to an e-board stuck in some Scottish
Highland village? So I thought well I can look at WAP so I went to WAP and they said well,
it's going to cost you this to do it. So the cost of actually that process um was too expensive.
And I thought have these guys got Internet connections? Well yes they have. Everybody has
got Internet connection. I can take a feed now off their broadband feed so as long as there is
a broadband feed into the shop I can have a small element of the bandwidth and use that free
of charge. So I didn’t even think of that but the threat led to an opportunity and a little bit of
research squared the box.
Professor Colin Gray
So a thread then became the source of a new strength?
Julian Brower
Absolutely. And that’s the thing. That’s the way you've got to think about it. You know we
are all dealing every day with the threats but it's our brains that turn those into opportunities.
Professor Colin Gray
So clearly the SWOT analysis is not a static thing. It's something which generates a dynamic
approach.
Julian Brower
Exactly. That’s what it's doing. It's little wheels going on inside and inside and you just come
up and you write down your threat and then you look for the opportunity – how are you going
to get around it. And you’ll be amazed that your entrepreneurial brain will solve it. And it's at
what point you can't solve it because it becomes too expensive, unrealistic can't resource it.
Then you start to think right, this is a serious threat I'm not going to be able to do much about
this so I now need to loo at another way of achieving this. So this is a lovely dynamic way of
doing that and you may start off with a very, very small SWOT list but that’s the creativity
process kicking in; that it is dynamic and it does change. And it changed throughout the
course I did.
Professor Colin Gray
So it’s actually at the heart of your evaluation process
Julian Brower
It is and that’s why it appeared very much at the top of my filter box because SWOT follows
through all the other processes. SWOT sits there as an umbrella across everything else and
as I learn things I drop them into the SWOT and it turns the handle and it may pop out but it
will come back some time later - just turn the handle and pop out the other end and if things
can get through my SWOT they get through to the idea at the end. And they very rarely do
sadly
Professor Colin Gray
And how does your idea now stack up in terms of your SWOT analysis
Julian Brower
Well I think there are a number of areas er that still remain threats. Um one of the biggest is
the finance threat, which I have mentioned. The other area is - is finding shops that aren't
going bust because they're going – they're losing business. But then you see there was
another thing that came out of it. I thought to myself I can't rely on village shops al the time so
where else am I … I thought pub tables. That was the other thing that came out of it. And this

3. came out of a discussion on the OU website with somebody who said have you thought about
advertising on pub tables? I thought yeah why not? Everybody goes in. They get drunk
they're looking at the table if we can take a small area of the table chop it up into bits, flogging
advertising –
Professor Colin Gray
Do you mean the surface of the table?
Julian Brower
Yeah the surface of the table. I mean electroluminescent screens are about no thickness at
all. They can sit under a sheet of glass and you can advertise taxis, kebabs um drive home
services, night-clubs, pole dancing, the lot. You can do it all on the tabletop. So I thought of a
new outlet that came out of it. That came out of a SWOT analysis because I was very
concerned about how many village shops I could get on board.