1. SWOT and A’WOT analysis
Quality of Life sub-module
Petri Kainulainen
EUREKA 2013, Mosonmagyarovar, Hungary

2. Background - SWOT
Widely used planning tool which can provide a good basis for strategic formulation
Systematic approach and support for a decision situation
Shows interactions between internal and external environments
Qualitative analysis performed mostly in planning phase
Often only a listing of internal and external factors
Can be used to identify the development issues in your project or case villages

3. Background - SWOT Strengths: - Weaknesses: Opportunities: Threats:
Internal, you can influence
External, you cannot influence
Positive
Negative

4. Background - SWOT Strengths: should be used to achieve objectives
should be strengthened more
Weaknesses:
should be avoided to achieve objectives
should be removed is possible
could be changed into strengths
Opportunities :
should be exploited to achieve objectives
Threats:
organization should defend itself against threats to achieve objectives

5. Example 1 – from first EUREKA
One case village from the area of Ylä-Savo in Finland
Strengths:
- Active village/people
- Good location
- Nature
- Safe environment
Weaknesses:
- Bad roads
- Old age of the occupants
- Strong small social groups
-Downward trend of agriculture
Opportunities:
- Utilization of the environment
- New occupants
- EU projects
- Co-operation
Threats:
- Decreasing number of occupants
- Young people move away
- Old people can’t cope their life
- envy/greediness

6. Example 2 – real world Strengths:
Ylä-savon Veturi Ry: Rural Development Program 2007 – 2013, SWOT for Ylä-Savo area
Strengths:
- Well functioning rural area
- Clean nature and safe environment
- Communization, helping neighbors, long traditions
- Positive attitude for rural development
- Strong agriculture and forestry
- Attitude and commitment of rural entrepreneurs for the development work
- Renewable natural resources
- Food industry
- Forest and wood industry
- Good educational supply for the needs of the area

7. Example 2 – real world Weaknesses:
Ylä-savon Veturi Ry: Rural Development Program 2007 – 2013, SWOT for Ylä-Savo area
Weaknesses:
- Bad roads and lack of public transportation
- Migration and aging
- Low level of education / lack of specialized employees
- Lack of jobs specially for women
- Deficiencies in business knowledge
- Capacity and transport problems caused by small size of the companies
- Lack of co-operation (chain) of development projects and investments

8. Example 2 – real world Opportunities:
Ylä-savon Veturi Ry: Rural Development Program 2007 – 2013, SWOT for Ylä-Savo area
Opportunities:
- Utilization of nature, culture and traditions in business and free time
- Increasing use and production of bioenergy
- Horses as a business and hobby
- Planned development of villages
- Increasing multiplicity of service needs and the capability of the rural people
- Specialization, networking and supply chains of small companies
- Fast internet connections and high technology
- People who move to the rural areas and summer cottages
- Multiculture

9. Example 2 – real world Threats:
Ylä-savon Veturi Ry: Rural Development Program 2007 – 2013, SWOT for Ylä-Savo area
Threats:
- Infrastructure and public services will weaken more
- People are moving away from rural areas and aging
- Lacking and tiredness of active interest groups
- Closing of small schools -> no common premises
- Continuation of companies with retiring entrepreneurs
- Lack of development of small companies
- Management of the farms as a full company
- No utilization of multiculture
- Development of focused on centers

10. Short SWOT excercise Make a SWOT table on your own group Use flap
What are the Strengths that you could use even more?
What are the Weaknesses that you should eliminate?
What are the Opportunities that you could utilize?
What are the Threats that you should avoid?
Use flap
Time for preparing: 20 mins
Time for presentations: 5 mins

11. A’WOT Basics
Why A’WOT
SWOT analysis is a qualitative method which can be hard to evaluate – its highly depending on the on the capabilities and expertise of the persons participating the process
SWOT usually pinpoints the number of factors within the group instead of the most important group
SWOT does not provide the importance of the factors or to assess decision alternatives according to the factors
A’WOT is an extension to SWOT and it gives SWOT more analytical scope
makes it easier to compare different strategies
it gives more objective results – numerical weights to SWOT factors

12. A’WOT Basics A’WOT is an analytical extension to the SWOT analysis
The standard version of A’WOT integrates Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) with the SWOT
Based on the pairwise comparisons of the SWOT factors
Yields analytically determined priorities for the factors of the SWOT
Alternative strategic decisions can be prioritised
We use a simpler method called Simple Multi-Attribute Rating Technique (SMART)
More straightforward
Suitable when there large number of decision alternatives and persons defining the priorities (no pairwise comparisons)
The main idea is
to prioritize the SWOT factors
to find out the most important factor groups
to compare different decision strategies -> each future scenario would have its owm SWOT and A’WOT
We can measure the quality of life in the different target groups (villages) and compare them with each other
We can prioritize the development issues in the respect of QoL

13. A’WOT Steps Define SWOT table
5-10 factors per each SWOT group
Determine weights for each factor within each SWOT group
decide first which is the most important and give 100 to that one
scale (0-100) other factors relative to the most important one -> e.g. 50 has the half of the importance compared to one with 100
Determine weights for each SWOT group
pick the most important factor from each SWOT group
decide which of the them is the most important and give 100 to that one
others relative to the most important SWOT group (as in previous step)
Scale weights
between 0-1 for each SWOT group
between 0-(SWOT group weight) for each factor within SWOT group
see the following example
Calculate Quality of Life index (Strengths + Opportunities – Weaknesses - Threats)
Make a list of overall priorities for the SWOT factors

14. Determine weights for SWOT groups and scale them
Strength:
S1: 100
S2: 80
S3: 60
S4: 20
-----
260
Weakness:
W1: 100
W2: 60
W3: 50
W4: 20
230
Opportunity:
O1: 100
O2: 40
O3: 20
O4: 10
170
Threat:
T1: 100
T2: 60
T3: 20
T4: 10
190
S1: 100 => 100/280 = 0,357
W1: 80 => 80/280 = 0,286
O1: 60 => 60/280 = 0,214
T1: 40 => 40/280 = 0,143
------
280

15. Scale factors within each SWOT group
100 => (100/260)*0,357 = 0,137
80 => (80/260)*0,357 = 0,110
60 => (60/260)*0,357 = 0,082
20 => (20/260)*0,357 = 0,027
0,356
W (0,286):
100 => (100/230)*0,286 = 0,124
60 => (60/230)*0,286 = 0,075
50 => (50/230)*0,286 = 0,062
20 => (20/230)*0,286 = 0,025
0,286
O (0,214):
100 => (100/170)*0,214 = 0,126
40 => (40/170)*0,214 = 0,050
20 => (20/170)*0,214 = 0,025
10 => (10/170)*0,214 = 0,013
0,214
T (0,143):
100 => (100/190)*0,143 = 0,075
60 => (60/190)*0,143 = 0,045
20 => (20/190)*0,143 = 0,015
10 => (10/190)*0,143 = 0,008
0,143

16. Calculation of well-being index
Strengths – Weaknesses + Opportunities – Threats
Strengths: 0,357
Weaknesses: 0,286
Opportunities: 0,214
Threats: 0,143
index = 0,357 – 0, ,214 – 0,143 = 0,142
====

17. Short A’WOT excercise Make an A’WOT analysis for your own group
Based on the SWOT made yesterday
The steps
Give weights within SWOT groups
Give weights between SWOT groups
Scale weights between groups
Scale weights within groups
Calculate QoL index