Porter's Five Forces (Evidence-Cited)
Purpose
Read an industry's structure through Porter's Five Forces, with evidence: search plan → force-by-force ratings with signals → profit-pool implication → next-step options. Each force — competitive rivalry, threat of new entrants, threat of substitutes, buyer power, supplier power — is rated weak/moderate/strong and justified with documented signals, because a rating without signals is vibes. The analysis closes where it should have been aiming all along: where the profit pool sits and who is squeezing it. Five forces is an argument about where margin goes, not a diagram for slide four.
Input
Works best with: the industry or segment, named as precisely as you can ("clinical data
management SaaS," not "healthcare"), and the decision this analysis should support.
Also useful: a geographic boundary if the structure differs by region, and a
market-landscape-scan in session — the forces read builds on
it and searches only gaps.
Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an
appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it against the question budget;
don't re-ask.
Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The skill opens with at most 3 questions (segment, decision, boundary) and proceeds on labeled assumptions if they go unanswered.
Example invocation: