Qualifying strategic opportunities to pursue and capitalizing on those opportunities is key to the very survival of an organization. Successful organizations that thrive on contract work capture contracts and earn a profit executing those contracts. Systems engineers are generally the "cradle to grave" technical points of contact for projects and are charged with guiding the definition of the technical solutions in the early lifecycle stages. This paper examines existing research that may guide systems engineering in support of bid and proposal pursuits. Systems engineering, software engineering, bid management, economics, finance, game theory, and cognitive psychology literature are all mined for areas related to bidding. As a result, a number of research opportunities are identified.

As systems engineering research matures, empirical data collection methods, such as surveys, are expected to be increasingly applied. Survey research has the potential to advance the maturity of systems engineering research. Applying systems engineering to survey research also has the potential to enhance survey research by offering a perspective that can improve the performance of various survey related activities with a case study survey are examined in the context of systems engineering technical and management processes, methods and tools. The current state of survey research literature is examined, and recommendations for how systems engineering can improve survey research are discussed. These recommendations include: (1) perform an in-depth analysis of the requirements of all of the stakeholders of the survey and (2) leverage the framework of risk and opportunity management offered by systems engineering to address survey data threats to validity. Researchers from all fields who use surveys to collect data can benefit from this complementary perspective and the unique recommendations presented in this paper.

The strategic application of systems engineering can lead to sustained competitive advantage for an organization. This paper expands the scope of the systems engineering strategy dialogue from its existing focus which is primarily based on specific case studies to a broader context and introduces a systems engineering strategy framework. The framework defines a state‐based model for systems engineering strategy. States are grouped by organization, environment, product or service, and systems engineering process characteristics. These characteristics provide an extensive set of considerations for making a strategic decision related to systems engineering. This paper discusses using the framework to support a variety of systems engineering decisions, including decisions related to investment and risk analysis. Decision makers can apply the framework to make more informed choices that ultimately will lead to an organization's long‐term survival. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Eng 15:

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Mastering the proposal process to ensure that contracts will be awarded is key to survival for organizations that thrive on contract work. Organizations often use systems engineering on proposals when complex systems are being engineered. However, not much research has been performed related to the use of systems engineering on proposals. This paper presents an analysis of results of a survey related to the use of systems engineering on proposals and identifies systems engineering related success factors for capturing contracts. The presented results can be used by decision makers to potentially increase the likelihood that proposal efforts will lead to contract awards.