Technology and Strategy

Porter's Five Forces were very clear to me this week. Porter is a business professor at Harvard University. He identified five areas that impact competition and strategizing in the business environment.  Potential new entrants, rivalry among existing competition, threats of close substitutes, power of buyers and power of suppliers are the forces Porter identified over 30 years ago. First, an organization must run an industry analysis to identify their industry and how that industry is changing. As companies analyze their competition and identify the areas of opportunity, they use the guidelines discovered by Porter. Identifying constraints and the strategies  to conquer them as FreshDirect grocery did, provide a strong competitive advantage in the market. Porter's robust framework can be applied to any industry. And he suggests that not only the employees of the company, but also the buyers, suppliers and the substitutes, should understand the strategy and the whole team will then strengthen that strategy's results. Here is a link that further explains Porter's Five Forces. http://hbr.org/2008/01/the-five-competitive-forces-that-shape-strategy/ar/1