Friday, August 14, 2009

Competitive Strategy: Analyzing your career and any industry

I am into an in-depth study of Michael Porter's competitive Strategy book , as part of my effort to understand a number of business concepts.

I have already gone through a number of marketing books such as
Positioning (Ries/Trout), Seth Godin(All Marketers are Liars ) etc.

However Porter's book is in a different class of its own. It gives you a framework to analyze any industry using a five forces framework of suppliers, buyers, threat of new entrants, substitutes and industry rivalry.

Some of the stuff is common sense and it seems this stuff is more applicable to late-stage or mature companies - than startups.

I am doing an analysis of two entities based on whatever I learned by studying this framework.
The first is that of a Software Engineer's career in USA.
The second one is of my current employer's industry.

Will be following up soon with posts on these subjects.