Week 6 Reading Reflection

The Five Competitive Forces that Shape Strategy
By: Michael Porter

1. There wasn't anything too surprising in this week's reading, however, it was a very interesting and informative article presenting new information in intelligent ways that I hadn't thought of before. There was a sentence that stood out to me the most, which was that, "strategy can be viewed as building defenses against the competitive forces or as finding a position in an industry where the forces are weaker". I think it's very interesting to view strategy from a perspective where instead of gearing up to become stronger, it's sometimes used to build a presence in a weakly-dominated niche market.
   
2. One part of the reading that was confusing to me was how according to Porter, eliminating today’s competitors through mergers and acquisitions can reduce an industry’s profit potential. There were some examples that he used that made it more clear later in the article.
   
3. The two questions I would ask the author would be:
• What kind of mergers and acquisitions do you see that is occurring right now, where you can predict its outcome?
• I would ask the author this question because I would want his intelligent opionion on current corporate economic models.
• What are your predictions on the industry profitablity in the future, with the tech industry?
• As there are many start-ups as wells as established corporate figures, I would want the author's opinion on how the market would change with different competitors.
  
4. I did not find anything in the article that I felt the author was wrong about.