Market Core · Competitors · Module
Reading their strategy
What a competitor is trying to become, inferred from where they invest, who they hire and what they decline — more predictive than anything they publish.
The idea
How it works
Porter’s competitor analysis asks four questions: what are they trying to achieve, what do they believe about the market, what are they currently doing, and what are they capable of. All four are answerable from public behaviour.
Hiring is the most under-used signal. What roles a competitor is recruiting for, in what volume and in which locations, describes their next two years more accurately than their marketing does.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Read the hiring
Job adverts are a published roadmap. Volume and role type say where the investment is going.
- 02
Note what they walk away from
Segments they stop serving and features they deprecate say more than announcements.
- 03
Infer their assumptions
What must a rival believe about the market for their behaviour to make sense? Where that belief is wrong is your opening.
- 04
Write it as a prediction
State what you expect them to do in twelve months. Checking it later is the only way to know whether the reading works.
One level in
The components of reading their strategy
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Job adverts are a published roadmap. Volume and role type describe a competitor’s next two years.
The other modules in competitors
The competitor set
Who is actually competing for the demand — direct rivals, substitutes, in-house alternatives and inaction — defined from what customers consider.
LearnCapability comparison
What each rival can actually do, on the dimensions customers weigh — assessed from evidence, including where they are better.
LearnMonitoring
The few developments that would change a decision, watched deliberately — because monitoring everything means monitoring nothing.
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