Early Application of Full Spectrum Analysis as Business Process

In "early application of full spectrum analysis as business process" the authors make two heroic assumptions. The first is that the planning methodologies in use by the American business community roughly parallel those in use by the US intelligence community (IC). Both face the problem sets of rapid context and process changes. The second, based on the first, is that planning is NOT a bad word in business - it is the business. Context drives market requirements; market requirements drive both technology and product (service) development; and resulting market-driven solutions drive both cash flows and profitability. In both, the need for internal control creates the underlying decision networks that define the pathways and alignment necessary to comprehend and communicate operational requirements and constraints. In the business community, the underlying marketing, product, and technology decision sets identify common needs across the corporation and create organization and strategy development and execution processes. Strategy decisions both generate and consume requirements, thereby creating (and destroying) value. Given the accelerating pace of change in the environment, the planning processes become both more critical and require more rigor. The potential value destruction of ill-considered propositions and investments may risk organizational survival. With these stated assumptions as a baseline, the authors begin to explore first applications of full-spectrum analysis in the global business environment where, like the IC, the participants can never have more than a passing advantage. Faced with rapidly changing global contexts; dissimilar standards of ethics and conduct; information overload, conflict, and obsolescence; fierce competition (including new and non-traditional competitors); multiuse and breakthrough technologies, etc., participants must pursue relentless improvement to create and address ever- present capability and operational mismatches. The macr- - o environment has become chaotic and the only real sustainable strategic advantage is time-to-understanding-and-action.