Planning Business Strategies in Diverse Companies

The most important problems for corporate planners in industry are planning the cash flow to ensure growth and helping the company to see itself, explicitly, as a portfolio and to assist the development of that portfolio. Planners have dismissed the role of operational research groups and O.R. techniques and basically simple techniques, usually developed by general consultants, have made a considerable impact, particularly "Boston" concepts of portfolio management. Planning processes are dominated by human judgement and the work of Godel is invoked to suggest that the use of better models to influence these corporate decisions is a forlorn hope. O.R. groups should concentrate on helping to solve perceived and real problems after seeking to display alternatives better, rather than to optimise. They should concern themselves more with improving the quality of presentation and ensuring the clarity of basically simple messages.