Man I am so out of touch. Learned today that it’s Porter’s Six Forces now, not Five Forces. I’ve been operating with one Force tied behind my back for decades now!
Next you’ll tell me Pluto isn’t a planet anymore.
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I’m pretty sure I didn’t learn about the five forces until@business school in 2003. And yet apparently the 6th force was added in the 1990s? Something doesn’t add up...
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Added by Andy Grove, it must be said!
(Or at least it seems that way, when he says “so let me add complements to Porter’s list, since that’s really useful to think about in the tech industry …” in Only The Paranoid Survive.
Funny he said it only matters in the tech space. Feels like most products have compliments. I assume more bread is sold because of the existence of peanut butter and jam? (And vice versa)
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I think he didn’t intend it to be an addition to the general theory. The examples he gave in the book (gasoline and cars, IIRC) were outside tech. But he added it because he said that was how he thought about potential threats.
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