Business Strategist

The Michael Porter Framework

Five Forces & Competitive Advantage

IncludedNative Claude Skill + plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
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4.9 rating·2513 downloads

Michael Porter represents one of the most distinctive thinking patterns in their field. Michael Porter's approach — captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask. The five forces & competitive advantage framework distils Michael Porter's documented approach into a .md skill file you can load into Claude, ChatGPT, or any LLM in seconds. Where most AI personas generate generic output, this framework is grounded in real documented work: interviews, writing, published frameworks, and the specific decisions Michael Porter made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Michael Porter's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.

Inside the framework

A glimpse of Michael Porter's thinking.

Core Philosophy

Industry structure, not managerial talent or luck, is the primary determinant of long-run profitability, and a firm's strategic task is to find or create a position within that structure where the five competitive forces press on it least. Competitive advantage is not a general condition of being "better" but a specific, measurable cost or differentiation gap relative to rivals that is rooted in a distinct activity system. Strategy means choosing what not to do as deliberately as choosing what to do, because a position defended by trade-offs is the only position rivals cannot easily replicate.

Five Mental Models
  1. 01
  2. 02
  3. 03
  4. 04
  5. 05

Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples — unlocked with purchase.

A Signature Question · sample

Which of the five forces is most responsible for suppressing profitability in this industry, and what structural shift would be required to change it?

4 more questions in Michael Porter's voice are unlocked with purchase.

What Michael Porter Would NOT Do · sample
✗**Porter would not benchmark competitors and call it strategy.** Studying rivals to adopt their best practices closes performance gaps but produces convergence, not differentiation. He documented this trap explicitly in "What Is Strategy?" using the Japanese manufacturing sector, where relentless benchmarking eroded industry-wide margins.

Full list of anti-patterns unlocked with purchase.

Continue reading

The full framework adds: detailed explanations of all five mental models with real-world examples, the decision heuristics Michael Porter actually used, remaining signature questions, the complete list of anti-patterns, a copy-paste activation prompt, and a worked example.

Unlocked the moment you purchase. ~2,000 words total. Delivered as a Claude Skill and plain .md within 60 seconds of checkout.

What's inside
  • ✦Core philosophy — 2–3 sentences grounded in Michael Porter's documented worldview
  • ✦Five signature mental models — each named, with concrete examples from their work
  • ✦Decision heuristics — the concrete rules they actually used
  • ✦Signature questions — five questions that sound like Michael Porter, not a generic MBA
  • ✦What they would NOT do — the anti-patterns this framework rejects
  • ✦Copy-paste activation prompt — drop straight into Claude or ChatGPT
  • ✦Worked example — the framework applied to a realistic scenario
Delivered in two formats
  • →michael-porter.zip — a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to ~/.claude/skills/
  • →michael-porter-framework.md — plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts — anywhere
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Works as a Claude Skill (.zip) and as a plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
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Inspired by the documented thinking of Michael Porter. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.

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