Executive Report on Strategies in Canada

The primary audience for this report is managers involved with the highest levels of the strategic planning process and consultants who help their clients with this task. The user will not only benefit from the hundreds of hours that went into the methodology and its application, but also from its alternative perspective on strategic planning in Canada.This report helps executives evaluate strategic investment and entry alternatives in Canada. As the editor of this report, I am drawing on a methodology developed at INSEAD, an international business school (www.insead.edu). The methodology decomposes a country's strategic potential along three key dimensions: (1) latent demand, (2) accessibility, and (3) trade indicators. A country may have very high latent demand, yet have low accessibility, making it a less attractive market than many smaller potential countries having higher levels of accessibility. With this perspective, this report provides a strategic profile of Canada. It does so by compiling published information that directly relates to latent demand and accessibility. The reader new to Canada can quickly understand where Canada fits into a firm's strategic perspective. In what follows, Chapter 2 is a general evaluation of the accessibility of Canada, with particular focus on investment and business conditions. In Chapter 3, I report my findings on the real economic potential, or latent demand, represented by Canada when defined as an area of dominant influence. Chapter 3 is followed by trade indicators for key industries, categories, and products in Canada.