ABSTRACT
Looking around we have impression that decision makers, institutions and authorities as well as major corporations neither have a clear view about their strategies nor the capability to direct their resources in a smart way.
This situation, looking back at the past decades, is not really new and it is due to many factors, including the shrinking of the time horizon and emphasis on short-term objectives along next quarter or next political campaign. Obviously, during a major crisis these approaches turn to be even more myopic and don't allow to develop an effective roadmap to react and exit from contingencies; in fact, the problem is even more serious if we consider that crisis periods usually correspond to big opportunities and missing them could correspond to a “strategic” disadvantage and major fallback.
Nowadays, advances in crucial sectors such as simulation, modelling, artificial intelligence and data analytics have a huge potential, especially when connected with their capability to process the massive data generated by companies and institutions as well as by technological advances such as Internet of Things and sensor networks.
Looking at this scenario, the increasing importance of an innovative discipline called Strategic Engineering becomes quite obvious. It provides a closed-loop approach to decision making based on quantitative models and algorithms able to guarantee major advantages. In this chapter, the most relevant concepts and architectures are presented as well as the needs and experiences carried out by Strategic Engineering over a wide spectrum of application fields.
