Opportunities and threats are those forces in the business environment that have positive and/or negative impacts on a business, but that remain outside of the business's control. Once identified, they populate the O and the T quadrants of the SWOT analysis matrix. But it's important that marketers see the distinction between the "strengths" and "weaknesses" that comprise the other half of SWOT. They key difference is control.

Farmers Edge is a precision agronomy and independent data management firm. It uses science and technology to help farmers maximize their yield. Let's split hairs a little here to really appreciate the difference between a strength and an opportunity. The firm's investment in technology is the strength. It's a commitment to sensing, seizing, exploiting, and leveraging technology toward assisting its customers through precision agronomy. This commitment is reflected in the creation of a firm's chief product officer position, a role designed to provide leadership in product innovation.

Patrick Crampton, the person responsible for delivering on the promise of this role, embraced it confidently. "The sustainable future of farming will rely heavily on precision agriculture," he says, "and I'm eager to be a part of the Farmers Edge team, who are leading the way in the advancement of agriculture by providing today's growers with the most advanced tools and premier technology solutions for their farming operations."

So Farmers Edge is committed to being totally plugged in to precision agriculturethat is the strength. The technology itself, however, is in a constant state of growth and expansion through sanctioned research projects in research institutions and universities around the world, including MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Stanford University, the University of Cambridge, and countless others. It proceeds and progresses irrespective of Farmers Edge or any other commercial endeavour. Therefore, the advancement of technology is an opportunity that arises outside of firms' control.

Farmers Edge didn't invent big data or GPS, but it's taken the technology and made it useful to farmers through a unique set of agronomy products. "Our Precision Solutions platform and ability to deliver on the farm is second to none in the industry," says CEO and president Wade Barnes. "Our continued investment in technology gives us the edge to deliver on the promise of agriculture not only today, but the real opportunity is what happens year two and year three, when we collect this data and start creating decision support tools for [the farmer]. Accumulating enough data so that he'll literally get an email saying you need to spray these four fields in two hours. That's the kind of stuff that's going to happen.. . . That's not what'sgoingto happenit's beginning to happen now!"

Questions

• Distinguish between a strength and an opportunity.
• Forces of the macroenvironment never occur in isolationthey are always triggered by a preceding event or set of events. What other force(s) in Farmers Edge's macroenvironment initiated the need for technological breakthrough in the field of agronomy?