Richard Z. Gooding, Ph.D., is president of Strategic Advantage, Inc.

He founded the company in 1994.

Dr. Gooding specializes in strategic planning and has over 25 years of experience helping executives make better business decisions. He has guided many top-management teams in developing and implementing strategic plans that achieve superior performance.

As a consultant, Dr. Gooding

• Facilitates strategic and operational planning sessions that build team commitment to strategy implementation.
• Helps companies design, evaluate, and implement new growth strategies that provide long-term competitive advantage.
• Conducts industry, competitor, and customer research studies to support informed strategic decision making.
• Conducts comprehensive pricing studies to determine optimal pricing strategies for unique company needs.
• Evaluates internal operations and helps companies develop outstanding core competencies.

Dr. Gooding is a widely recognized expert in strategic planning, mergers/acquisitions, organizational design, pricing strategy, managerial decision-making, and employee participation. He developed Strategic Risk Analysis™, which is an effective and efficient technique for realistically evaluating and successfully implementing new product/market expansions and merger/acquisition strategies. He is a skilled researcher with extensive experience using mass-distributed and targeted surveys, structured interviews, and focus groups. His distinctive scientific approach to mailed surveys consistently achieves a 30-to-50-percent response rate.

Dr. Gooding frequently makes enlightening presentations about strategic planning, pricing strategy, and strategic risk analysis before executive audiences. He has spoken at Inc. magazine's "Growing Your Company" conferences, the Institute of Management Consultants National Conference, several TEC groups, the Strategic Leadership Forum, and regional conferences of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. His speeches and workshops consistently receive high ratings.

Before founding Strategic Advantage, Dr. Gooding was a professor of management at Arizona State University, where he taught courses in strategic planning and managerial decision-making. While at ASU he conducted research studies examining corporate and business strategies in a wide range of industries. His strategic-planning doctorate is from Michigan State University, and he also holds a master's degree in social work (with studies in social service planning and administration) from Western Michigan University.

As vice president of global strategic planning for Avnet-a Fortune 500 company-Dr. Gooding designed and implemented a global planning process that helped turn Avnet into one of the world's leading distributors of electronic components.