> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.cpj.fyi/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# The New Five Forces
- URL: https://www.cpj.fyi/radar/the-new-five-forces/
- Published: 2026-02-05T13:52:33.000Z
- Updated: 2026-02-05T13:52:33.000Z
- Description: Porter's Five Forces are worth critiquing but we've got to adopt structures that actually allow organizations to adapt to big shocks.
- Author: Clay Parker Jones
- Tags: Radar, Strategy, Economics

A [WEF article by Noa Gafni](https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/09/new-five-forces-business/?ref=cpj.fyi) from last year argues that Porter's Five Forces—competitive rivalry, supplier power, buyer power, threat of substitutes, barriers to entry—are obsolete. Her replacement is five *new* forces that now shape business more than industry-level competition does: technology, environment, society, economy, and geopolitics.

She's in good company here. Rita McGrath at Columbia has argued since 2013 that [sustainable competitive advantage is dead](https://hbr.org/2013/06/transient-advantage?ref=cpj.fyi) and that we should think in "arenas" rather than "industries." Martin Reeves at BCG [showed in 2012](https://hbr.org/2012/09/your-strategy-needs-a-strategy?ref=cpj.fyi) that Porter's framework belongs in one quadrant of a much larger strategic palette—the stable, predictable quadrant—and that applying it elsewhere is actively harmful. Last year, Brandenburger and Nalebuff renewed their [30-year argument](https://www.adambrandenburger.com/aux/material/ssf-06-27-24.pdf?ref=cpj.fyi) that the framework can't even see complements—products that *increase* the value of yours—making it structurally blind to platform economics. Porter himself [reaffirmed the framework in 2008](https://hbr.org/2008/01/the-five-competitive-forces-that-shape-strategy?ref=cpj.fyi), dismissed all proposed additions, and hasn't published a comparable update since. That was eighteen years ago.

The examples that disprove Porter's strategic validity are *vivid*. Volkswagen had a textbook-perfect Porter position in 2014, and then Dieselgate erased half the company's market value overnight. So *not* new entrants or a substitutes, but regulatory and social accountability risk, categories absent from Porter's framework. I [wrote at the time](https://www.cpj.fyi/essays/the-new-model-for-scaling-a-company/) that "people can do amazing things together, but they can also perpetrate deeply unnerving evil." A bit bold, maybe, but a 600,000-person organization systematically cheating emissions tests is not really an industry-dynamics story. Huawei was the world's largest telecom equipment maker, well-positioned by every industry metric, until the U.S. government placed it on the Entity List and cut off access to Android and critical semiconductors. Geopolitics ate my homework, I guess.

### The OD angle

As with all frameworks, this new one is [wrong but useful](https://blogs.sas.com/content/iml/2025/04/02/all-models-are-wrong.html?ref=cpj.fyi), and short on the prescription. It names five macro forces but doesn't offer much guidance on what organizations should do about them. *The question is whether your organization can sense what's coming and respond in close-to-real-time*. I've been skeptical for some time that there are many industries or moments left where stable strategy is desirable or even possible. Average tenure of a company on the S&P 500 was 33 years in 1964, dropped to 24 by 2016, and is [forecast to hit 12 years by 2027](https://www.innosight.com/insight/creative-destruction/?ref=cpj.fyi). If half the S&P 500 will be replaced in a decade, stable positioning within a stable industry is becoming less and less realistic.

In *Hidden Patterns'* [Do the Right Thing](https://www.cpj.fyi/26-do-the-right-thing/) I argue that organizations and teams should only worry about doing things *right* only once *absolutely certain* they're the right things. For most organizations right now, the right things are shifting faster than any planning cycle can accommodate. I see three systems for staying oriented:

1. one person decides (not ideal, but possible in some cases);
2. formalized direction (think like *guidelines* for what's right and what's wrong... "by-right zoning" is an example of this in a city, and "design systems" are an example of this in corporate);
3. intentional environmental scanning (now, near, next, maybe via [Wardley Mapping](https://learnwardleymapping.com/?ref=cpj.fyi)?).

That third system explicitly calls for tracking *weak signals of change in society, technology, economics, environment, and politics.* So, Gafni's new five forces, built into a pattern that tells you what to do with them.

But scanning means nothing if you can't act on what you find, so I'd recommend *actually* adopting a structure like [Network of Teams](https://www.cpj.fyi/13-network-of-teams/) such that the business can reconfigure itself as conditions change. Teams can form, merge, split, or dissolve based on emerging needs rather than through agonizingly slow top-down reorgs. With strong teams whose explicit job is scanning the environment (as compared to a "strategy department" that produces annual decks, say) signals could be routed immediately to the people who can do something about it.

### What to watch

- **Whether "new forces" thinking produces action or stays conceptual.** We've had macro-environmental scanning frameworks for nearly six decades. For that *entire time* we've held on to structures that can't quickly respond to the data that come out of them.
- **Sensing teams.** A January 2026 [BCG/WEF/IMD report](https://www.bcg.com/press/12january2026-companies-dedicated-geopolitics-department?ref=cpj.fyi) found fewer than 1 in 5 companies have a dedicated geopolitics function. They identified four OD archetypes for building one: Watchtower, Influence Network, Command Cell, Nerve Center.
- **The speed of structural response.** When the next macro shock hits, watch whether companies can reconfigure their networks or whether they're still waiting for the annual planning cycle to catch up.