Updating Michael Porter's Classic 'Five Forces'

•  
  amichaels@...01/08/08 Report as spam
  1

  Porter is #1 Business Strategic Thinker

  Thank you for the excellent article.
  
  Michael Porter's article is fabulous, as are his books. For practitioners, the most important part of this article is porter's sidebar for defining an industry.
  
  In my 22 years experience using Porter's ideas, including the last six years using them every day to create a knowledgebase of the top 10,000 global industries, the number one mistake people make in using Porter is defining "industry" at way too high a level. For example - it's a huge mistake to think that banking or transportation or software is an industry. They are each industry sectors.
  
  So it's great that Porter included his sidebar giving an example of why car motor oil and truck motor oil are best analyzed as two distinct industries. The best solution is to analyze all related industries and to understand the differences for formulating business strategies.
  
  Alan S. Michaels, co-founder
  www.eCompetitors.com