Awareness of the five forces can help a company understand the structure of its industry and stake out a position that is more profitable and less vulnerable to attack. by Michael E. Porter In 1979, a ...

VARs/Interconnects are vying with Managed Services Providers to develop more cost-effective service delivery models, especially for SMBs. Hosted models are gaining momentum, and the pay-as-you-go ...

In our business, we spend a lot of time helping companies determine what their competitive differentiators are. What are their competitive advantages? How do they position themselves as being ...

In Parts I through III, we talked about how, in just over a generation, the U.S. cattle industry had succumbed to an oligopolistic market structure created by global beef packers […] ...

The concept of "moats" in business is relatively new, although the underlying strategy has existed for a long time. While companies have been building, or attempting to build, moats around their ...

Dutch Bros’ executives are focused on rapidly expanding the store base. But the made-to-order coffee industry is a fiercely competitive one. Investors are right to wonder whether Dutch Bros can ...

The following is an excerpt from Phil Mackintosh and Michael Normyle's paper titled: How Exchanges Compete: An Economic Analysis of Platform Competition. The full paper can be read here. Exchanges ...

Porter, Michael E. "The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy." Special Issue on HBS Centennial. Harvard Business Review 86, no. 1 (January 2008): 78–93.