You will be asked to submit your third blog entry about another important aspect of the strategic management process and to provide examples based on current events pulled from recent articles from reputable sources (such as a major national news source like the NY Times, Business Week, etc.).

Recall that the main article(s) for each of your blog entries must be no older than 4 months old. If you use an older article as your primary focal article, you will be asked to redo the assignment. You may, of course, use older sources to support your discussion but the article serving as the main focus of your paper must be recent.

For your third discuss the importance of the strategy formulation and planning phase. Identify one recent article that identifies a recent major strategic effort on the part of an organization. What would you have recommended if you were sitting at the strategy planning table? Examples of such an effort might include mergers, buy-outs, sell-offs, introduction of innovative products, strategic marketing campaigns ...and the like.

Discuss to what extent you believe this effort will succeed given the organization's external environment. What is the take-away for your reading audience? That is, what strategic planning lessons can be learned from the situation you highlighted in your blog entry?