Why is strategic management important to today's corporate?

Because the strategic management involves:

- The ability to recognize the interaction between customer requirements, customer demand, competitors and their products, and its own society and its ability to meet customer needs

- The ability to identify the need for change: change in societies occur today in many more directions than before

- The ability to imagine change strategies: the determination of the strategy is both an intellectual process, one of obtaining the accession process, and a creative process.

- The ability to use the tools of change: knowledge of components of strategic management and some knowledge of traditional attitudes towards strategy problems are an excellent aid to good management.

- The ability to put the strategies used: any mental effort and creativity you put into designing a strategy will only be a huge waste of time if your ideas are not implemented.

Strategic planning has always been important, but its important has increased over the last 50 years and is likely to continue to do so.

Planning becomes more important as the future becomes less predictable.  In other words, in a very stable environment planning is not such a big deal: if you do the same next year as you did last you, it'll probably be fine.

As the pace of technological change has increased, the future has become less predictable.  Techologically, 1400 didn't look all that different from 1200 in most parts of the world: but 2000 looks very different from 1800.  Part of this change has been in speed of communication, so that not only do you have more change but that change is communicated faster.   With cheap global telecommunication, physical movement and the internet, things can change very fast indeed.

Hand in hand with all this there has been an increase in consumer sophistication.  Particular marketing strategies used to last for years or even decades: now they last for months. 

What all that means is that if you do the same next year as you did last year, you will probably go bust.  So you have to make a plan to not go bust.