Rethinking and reinventing Michael Porter's five forces model

Abstract

Michael Porter's five competitive forces model has been a most influential model within business schools but has perhaps had less appeal to the practising manager outside of an MBA and certain short business school courses. In this article it is argued that whilst there are a number of reasons why the model has not achieved greater currency, most importantly it can be developed a lot further. The paper looks at a number of important opportunities for using Porter's model in an even more practical way, including: mapping the competitive forces, which can vary significantly over market and competitive terrain and within the same industry; understanding its dynamics; prioritizing the forces; doing macro analysis of the sub-drivers of each of the five forces; exploring key interdependencies, both between and within each force. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.