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About this tool
Builds a four-quadrant SWOT grid from your own lists, checks it for balance, and derives the four TOWS strategy pairings you can copy out as Markdown.
A SWOT analysis sorts what you know about a decision onto two axes — internal versus external, helpful versus harmful — producing the four quadrants Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. This maker builds that grid from four plain lists, flags quadrants that are empty or overloaded, and then crosses them into the four TOWS strategy types published by Heinz Weihrich in Long Range Planning in 1982: SO, WO, ST and WT. It is for founders writing a plan, managers preparing a strategy session, and students who need the grid and the reasoning that follows it.
Open SWOT Analysis Maker on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Add your input to the workspace.
Adjust the options until the result looks right.
Copy or download the output and put it to work.
Empty quadrants, quadrants with fewer than 3 items, and entries longer than 120 characters are all flagged.
Every Strength is crossed with every Opportunity and Threat, and every Weakness likewise, so the grid turns into candidate actions.
The whole analysis, including the TOWS section, comes out as a Markdown table you can paste into a doc, or a CSV you can sort.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. Strengths and Weaknesses are internal — things you control, like your team, cost base or technology. Opportunities and Threats are external — things you can only react to, like a competitor's move, a regulation or an interest rate. That internal/external split is the test that decides which box an item goes in.
Three to seven. Fewer than three usually means the quadrant has not really been thought about, and more than seven stops the grid being readable in a meeting — at that point merge the weakest items into the stronger ones. This tool flags both cases as you type.
TOWS crosses the SWOT quadrants to produce strategies rather than lists. Heinz Weihrich set it out in 1982 with four types: SO (maxi-maxi) uses a strength to take an opportunity, WO (mini-maxi) fixes a weakness that blocks one, ST (maxi-mini) uses a strength to blunt a threat, and WT (mini-mini) reduces a weakness a threat would exploit. SWOT tells you where you stand; TOWS is what you do about it.
An opportunity. The test is control: if you would still have it after a competitor copied you, it is internal and belongs in Strengths; if it exists whether or not your company does, it is external and belongs in Opportunities. A growing market, a new regulation and a rival's stumble are all opportunities; your cost base, your patents and your team are strengths.