

#40: Tactics Masquerading as Strategy and The End of Porter's Five Forces
Today we are examining business strategy, and especially, strategies that are weak, becoming "Tactics Masquerading as Strategy". And then, we tie that to a key philosophical underpinning of many business strategies that we may be adapting away from: Porter's Five Forces. This is a philosophy that fits very well with the last four decades. It would be a largely successful framework to start strategic thinking… but just as we want to be able to identify when a strategy is really just a reduction into tactics, we want to be able to understand the underlying building blocks philosophy a strategy rests on. So it's important to consider that this framework is now being reevaluated, even by Michael Porter himself and his colleagues, who starting in about 2011 now write mostly on Creating Shared Value. So, some kind of change is afoot. Let’s get into it.