AI Prompts for Strategy and Strategic Analysis

Turn the following solution or decision into a clear action plan. Break it into sequenced steps, identify dependencies and the critical path, note who needs to own each part, and define the first concrete steps. Flag the few actions that matter most for momentum and any step that is a prerequisite for many others.

The solution or decision is:

Map the competitive landscape for the following business or decision. Identify the key competitors and substitutes, how each is positioned, their strengths and vulnerabilities, and where the market is heading. Then locate the white space and the threats, and conclude with how this should shape our strategy.

The business or decision is:

Your role is to help me evaluate options rigorously against explicit criteria. First, ask me what options I'm choosing between and what matters most in the decision, and help me turn that into a clear set of weighted criteria. Then score each option against each criterion, show the reasoning, and present the comparison as a matrix with a weighted result. Flag where a small change in the weights would flip the answer. Start by asking what decision I'm trying to make.

Assume it is one year from now and the following plan has failed badly. Working backwards, describe the most plausible chains of events that caused the failure, covering different types of cause (execution, market, people, assumptions, external shocks). For each failure path, identify an early-warning signal I could watch for now and a step that would reduce the risk.

The plan is:

Build a set of scenarios for the following strategic question. Identify the critical uncertainties that will most shape the future, then construct three or four distinct, plausible scenarios — structurally different worlds, not just good and bad versions. For each, describe how it unfolds and what it would mean for us, and conclude with the moves that make sense across most scenarios.

The strategic question is:

Stress-test the following plan against a range of plausible futures. Construct three or four divergent scenarios — not just optimistic and pessimistic, but structurally different worlds — and assess how the plan holds up in each. Identify which elements are robust across all scenarios and which depend on one particular future arriving, then suggest how to make the plan more resilient.

The plan is:

Analyze the current strategic situation described below. Assess the internal and external forces at play, the key dynamics and trends, what's driving them, and where the real leverage and constraints lie. Conclude with the two or three factors that matter most for the strategy ahead.

The situation is:

For the following strategic challenge, generate a set of genuinely distinct strategic options — not variations on one idea, but different paths that rest on different bets. For each, capture the core logic, what would have to be true for it to win, and its main risk. Include at least one bold or contrarian option.

The strategic challenge is:

Run these in order, as a sequence rather than a single request. Replace the bracketed terms, and let each answer inform the next step.

1. Diagnose. Analyze the current state of [system or sector] in [place or market]: its main components, how it performs on efficiency, access, cost and quality, and where the bottlenecks sit.

2. Decompose. Break the system into its main subsystems and describe each one.

3. Rank and baseline. Rank those subsystems by [criteria: cost, safety, speed, reach], estimate each one's share of use or importance, and state the average [key metric: time, cost, access] a user experiences today.

4. Expand. Bring in the adjacent systems and external factors currently outside the analysis: private sector, informal sector, technology, environment.

5. Trend and risk. How has [emerging factor] changed over the last [X years], and what risk does that shift carry?

6. Scenarios. Using a systems thinking approach, build four scenarios for the next [20 to 30 years] from two critical uncertainties. Name and justify the two variables, lay the scenarios out as a 2x2, and give a real-world analog for each.

7. Technology layer. How would plausible technological change alter each scenario?

8. Strategies. Propose three long-term strategies. For each: the objective, the key actions, and the expected effect on the system.

9. Roadmap. Sequence the work across short, medium and long term, with actions and expected outcomes at each stage.

10. Cost and funding. Estimate the investment each strategy needs, in ranges, and identify realistic funding sources across public, private and blended.

11. Prioritize under constraint. With a limited budget, which projects go first, weighing cost against impact against speed of implementation?

12. Simulate. Model how [key metric] moves as each phase lands, broken down by user group. Then simulate the worst case in which the main risks go unaddressed, and quantify its economic cost.

13. Decide and communicate. Turn the analysis into a cost-benefit case over [time horizon] with NPV, ROI, payback and a sensitivity check. Finish with a one-page executive summary.