/porters-five-forces

name: porters-five-forces
argument-hint: "[industry or segment, and the decision it supports]"
description: "Read an industry's structure through Porter's Five Forces with documented signals per rating, ending at the profit pool. Use when weighing market entry or when margins erode and nobody can say why."
intent: >-
  An evidence-cited five-forces read: rivalry, new entrants, substitutes (with AI-driven substitution
  named explicitly), buyer power, and supplier power — each force rated weak/moderate/strong with the
  documented signals that justify the rating, closing with where the profit pool sits and who is
  squeezing it.
type: workflow
theme: market-intelligence
best_for:
  - "Pressure-testing a market-entry decision against the industry's actual structure"
  - "Explaining margin erosion structurally instead of blaming execution"
  - "Grounding strategy debates in rated forces with evidence, not vibes"
scenarios:
  - "We're considering entering the clinical-data-management space — what does its structure do to everyone who plays?"
  - "Our margins keep compressing and every explanation is tactical; give me the structural read"
estimated_time: "25-40 min per run"

Porter's Five Forces (Evidence-Cited)

Purpose

Read an industry's structure through Porter's Five Forces, with evidence: **search plan → force-by-force ratings with signals → profit-pool implication → next-step options.** Each force — competitive rivalry, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, buyer power, supplier power — is rated weak/moderate/strong and justified with documented signals, because a rating without signals is vibes. The analysis closes where it should have been aiming all along: **where the profit pool sits and who is squeezing it.** Five forces is an argument about where margin goes, not a diagram for slide four.

Input

**Works best with:** the industry or segment, named as precisely as you can ("clinical data management SaaS," not "healthcare"), and **the decision this analysis should support**. **Also useful:** a geographic boundary if the structure differs by region, and a [`market-landscape-scan`](../market-landscape-scan/SKILL.md) in session — the forces read builds on it and searches only gaps.

Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended `ARGUMENTS:` line — counts as answers already given. Use it against the question budget; don't re-ask.

**Arriving empty-handed? That works too.** The skill opens with at most 3 questions (segment, decision, boundary) and proceeds on labeled assumptions if they go unanswered.

**Example invocation:** `Five forces on mid-market field-service management software, North America — decision: whether we enter or partner.`

Key Concepts

• **Governing protocol:** honors the [`autonomous-investigation`](../autonomous-investigation/SKILL.md)

contract — question budget of 3, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough Mode (2-4 signals per force), stable schema, 4-option Final Step. Disciplines: FININT (concentration, margins, filings) + OSINT (analyst coverage, trade press) per [`intelligence-collection-disciplines`](../intelligence-collection-disciplines/SKILL.md).

• **The framework (Porter, 1979):** industry profitability is determined by five structural forces,

not by how hard incumbents work. Rivalry sets the intensity of margin competition; entry threat caps pricing; substitutes cap value; buyer power extracts margin downstream; supplier power extracts it upstream. Structure explains what negotiation skill cannot: **pricing power is structural.**

• **Ratings must survive "how do you know?"** Each weak/moderate/strong rating stands on documented

signals — concentration data, switching costs, entry examples and how they fared, substitute adoption curves, margin trends. Forces-with-signals is the difference between naming a framework and using one.

• **AI-driven substitution is a named candidate, always.** In most knowledge industries it is now

*the* substitute threat; assess it explicitly in the substitutes force rather than letting the analysis pretend it's 2015. Supplier power gets the same modern read: cloud, model, and platform dependencies are supplier concentration.

• **Industry, not player:** this reads what the structure does to *everyone* who plays.

[`swot-analysis`](../swot-analysis/SKILL.md) reads one company's position within it.

• **When NOT to use:** nascent categories with no stable structure — the forces are still forming;

run the landscape scan and revisit.

• **Do-not-invent list:** market share, margin data, entrant names, funding rounds, adoption figures.

Application

1. **Credit inline context**, then ask only the unanswered questions (max 3): 1. Which industry or segment, precisely? 2. What decision should this support? 3. Any geographic boundary? 2. **Show the 3-bullet search plan** — what you'll search per force, source types (filings, analyst coverage, trade press, pricing pages, funding databases), fact/inference separation. Continue unless revised. If a landscape scan is in session, build on it; search only gaps. 3. **Rate each force with signals, then emit the schema below exactly.**

Output schema (do not reorder)

~~~markdown

Five Forces: [Industry / Segment]

**As-of date:** | **Boundary:** | **Decision supported:**

1. Competitive Rivalry — [weak / moderate / strong]

• Signals: [concentration, growth rate, differentiation, exit barriers — each with URL + label]
• What it means here: [one sentence]

2. Threat of New Entrants — [weak / moderate / strong]

• Signals: [entry barriers, capital needs, recent entrants and how they fared, regulation — each with URL + label]
• What it means here: [one sentence]

3. Threat of Substitutes — [weak / moderate / strong]

• Signals: [substitute adoption, price-performance trajectory, switching evidence — each with URL + label]
• A