Category: MentalModel
-
SWOT: Discover new opportunities and crush threats
Possibly the most popular strategy tool ever (strategists and business consultants love a 2×2) the SWOT box helps you identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. A SWOT analysis can help you carve out a sustainable niche in you market, or on a personal level, help develop your career that best uses your talent and opportunities.…
-
How 5 Forces Shape a Firm’s Competitive Position
Use this model to understand where power lies in a business situation. Michael Porter’s five forces model is a useful tool to understand and cope with competition. It helps you frame both the strength of your current position and the strength of a position you’re thinking about moving into. If these forces are intense within…
-
Learn to learn better in 3 steps
With three, brutalist green triangles because they’re memorable.
-
Why large, successful firms should be wary of lower-cost upstarts
Use this model if you want to understand why large, successful companies are prone to disruption. A central theme running through Clayton Christensen’s innovation research is how companies can guard against being disrupted. How can successful innovators avoid having their lunch eaten by smaller, nimbler upstarts? As a company grows, its once simple products…
-
Crossing the chasm: the adoption of new tech
This model illustrates what’s required to take new, disruptive technology into the mainstream. Geoffrey Moore built on Everett Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory to set out the marketing challenge a company faces when attempting to launch a new high tech product into the mainstream. The essence of the theory is that innovations are absorbed in…