Porter's Five Forces 101

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  amichaels@...02/17/08 Reported as spam
  1

  Porter's Five Forces still the best

  Jenna,
  
  I've used Porter's Five Forces methodology for the past 22 years at a global IT company, a global bank, and two major insurance companies where I was also the corporate planner.
  
  Porter's industry analysis methodology is taught around the world in MBA schools because it is the best methodology, by far. It is not widely used in practice because companies depend on information vendors for raw data; and the widely known information vendors provide only "industry sector" data or industry data along the lines of poorly defined SIC and NAICS industry codes. (Too bad NAICS codes are just updated SIC codes which were designed before Porter wrote his great books.)
  
  There is at least one website that does provide industry data at the Porter Five Forces level for over 10,000 industries - and that's at www.eCompetitors.com.
  
  Cheers,
  Alan S. Michaels
  Co-founder www.ecompetitors.com

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  Ian P02/19/08 Report as spam
  2

  RE: Porter's Five Forces 101

  Jenna
  In the UK the big finance houses demand market analyses based on Porter's five forces (and other models) as part of any submission for funding.
  Whether it is a good, bad or indifferent model is irrelevant. What it does is to focus your thinking around your marketing strategy and gives them a view of how seriously and intelligently you are approaching your business.
  If you demonstrate that you understand your market and have a clear strategy for working in that market then you have taken a giant step towards winning your backing.
  Porter's model is an industry standard, so I guess I will be using it again and again.
  Ian

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  lukeod02/19/08 Report as spam
  3

  The value is in Porter's detail

  If you look at the 5 forces and the way in which Porter suggests that you can increase or decrease your competitive position in each of the areas, you can actually uncover insights that you would otherwise miss. The only time I have seen them used to no real effect is when they are given lip-service by someone who has not gone the extra yard to break it down to its component parts.

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  aniltom@...02/21/08 Report as spam
  4

  RE: Porter's Five Forces 101

  I think you should read the December Issue of HBR which is a strategy power pill, it reproduces the original article as it was first published, plus a lot of analysis.
  
  The answer to your question is bit longwinded, however my attempt to answer your query goes as below:
  
  a) Entrepreneur: faces these issues daily
  b) In Employment : depending on the level at which you operate and the nature of your assignment, you will run into to walls, which one way or another can be categorized within one of these five forces( You may endup running into a couple of walls that don???t fit anywhere also!!)
  
  Have fun!!

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  wisdom.chitedze@...04/02/08 Report as spam
  5

  RE: Porter's Five Forces 101

  I work in the Public sector, the line between the 5 aspects of the forces can blur quickly as your customer can be your supplier too e.g. govt depts.
  
  In addition, for a regulatory authority like my employer it means it has no direct and similar rival, the rivalry comes from other regulatory authorities all gunning for the same govt support and resources. We are better poised because we do not get govt subvention but rely on a payroll levy from all employers.
  
  Now the Govt is the largest employer (customer)and it rarely pays its whole levy, its also a supplier and a powerful one at that. Do we sue the govt?
  
  We fund Technical Colleges so that they purchase equipment for students, and they rarely account for the funds and when we want to withold subsequent funding they raise a furole with the Ministry of Education that we are hampering their efforts to educate the youth of Malawi. It then becomes political, what to do?
  
  So you find that in the Public sector such kind of dynamism can challenge the framing of stakeholders and forces using Porter's 5 forces, but still it helps in logically thinking about the sector and how the forces within it interact