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In a recent article, Industry Week Magazine discussed the slowdown in seed money for new technological innovation. The author remarked that throughout its history the U.S. has always expanded the knowledge base and selected new options to fashion economic and social progress, but during the last decade the R&D share of the national economy has steadily shrunk. He attributes this decline in R&D spending to pressure to maintain profits in the face of rising costs, high interest rates, and regulatory constraints. Because of these cost pressures, industry has taken a hard look at R&D spending and demanded shorter term results.

Over the past 90 years, 50% of all mergers have been judged failures by the executives responsible for them.

Out of the minds of chief executives comes the direction the corporation will take—be it expansion into new markets, expansion of current operations, acquisition of new lines of business, divestiture of selected business units, or contraction of certain operations. Two questions come to mind: How well prepared to make those decisions (in terms of breadth of background) are the men who fill these jobs? And, considering the environmental changes, can chief executives operate in the future as they have in the past? We believe that planning must and will, by the force of events, play a more vital role in the development and generation of CEOs.

IN 1981 we began surveying U.S. companies in the $800 million to $20 billion annual sales range to obtain a sophisticated job description of the top corporate planning positions. The real aim of the survey was simple: to establish a role model for the corporate planner of the 1980s. To define this model, the survey sought to determine as precisely as possible:

Zero‐base budgeting (ZBB) provides top management with detailed information concerning the money needed to accomplish desired ends. Each expenditure is analyzed in terms of purpose and function to build a budget. ZBB spotlights redundancies and duplication of efforts among departments, focuses on dollars needed for programs rather than on the percentage increase (or decrease) from the previous year, specifies priorities within and among departments and divisions, and allows a performance audit to determine whether each activity or operation performs as desired.

FOR more than a decade, planners have relied on the portfolio analysis method for assessing the strategic posture of a company's individual businesses. But many top planners have begun to question the value and validity of the portfolio matrix. While this discontentment with matrix methodology appears to be confined to companies with either elementary or highly developed strategic planning systems, what management finds most frustrating is the difference between the amount of time and money spent on portfolio analysis and the value of the resulting strategies.

A metamorphosis is taking place in strategic planning. Indicative of the change is the number of recent planning articles appearing in Fortune and the Financial Times of London highlighting the long‐standing complaint of many businessmen that tools such as the experience curve and portfolio matrix, while of some value to a company assessing its portfolio and those of its competitors, provide no more than one element of a more fully developed competitive model.

Joint ventures and cooperative arrangements offer a way for planners' strategic reach to match their grasp in the 1980s. Recognizing the forces of change at work in the market, more and more firms are seeing the need to pool complementary strengths to expedite productivity, penetrate unexploited markets, and gain access to new technologies.

Uncertainty is the norm of our time: uncertainty with the U.S. economy, uncertainty with continuing oil supplies at a reasonable price, uncertainty with continued economic growth. American industry stands at the threshold of a new era. Perhaps never before has industry had at one time so many problems and such promise for the future. Superior planning, management, and research will be required to solve the problems ahead and to realize the prospectus for the future.

In some companies planners review proposed decisions as well as administering long‐ and short‐range strategy formulations. A case in point is the following example, in which a diversified, multidivision corporation allows planners direct influence on senior management decisions. Here the planning function acts as an internal consulting group. One project in which planners become involved is a proposed manufacturing and marketing expansion by one of the company's consumer products divisions.