Which is the chicken and which is the egg?
Good strategy always requires good analysis as a foundation, but analysis without a clear understanding of the context of the analysis usually ends up as just data.
Effective strategy development generally has at its core a pattern of evidence that has been recognised as being of critical importance to the enterprise, either as an opportunity or as an emerging threat.
Evidence can be collected and massaged, but the recognition of the patterns in the data is a cogitative process, rather than a quantitative one.
