From Position to Power

How to think about competition beyond features and growth

There’s a difference between understanding competition and understanding advantage. You can know your competitors’ features, pricing, positioning. You can track growth rates and funding rounds. You can even build detailed comparison matrices. And still miss the structural question.

I was reminded of that recently while finishing 7 Powers ⁽¹⁾ and, around the same time, serving on a jury evaluating several fintech companies. Evaluating companies across categories forces you to abstract away from product details and look at business models and competitive mechanics. At that level, one question dominates: what becomes structurally stronger if this company wins?

That question sits at the intersection of three strategic lenses that are often treated separately: industry structure, market transition, and durable advantage.

Porter’s work⁽²⁾ forces you to see the environment before you focus on the player. Industries are not neutral terrain. They shape margins through bargaining power, substitutes, barriers to entry, and rivalry. The result is a more grounded question: are the industry economics attractive in the first place?

Moore⁽³⁾ moves the discussion from structure to transition. Adoption is not linear. Early traction does not guarantee mainstream acceptance. Scaling requires deliberate sequencing. The effect is a more disciplined approach to expansion.

But neither of these answers the durability question.

Helmer’s contribution is not another framework to memorize. It is a reframing of the objective. The goal of strategy is not growth. It is persistent advantage.

Reviewing those companies across categories, what interested me more than growth metrics was reinforcement. Does scale improve unit economics? Do switching costs increase with usage? Does the product gain value as adoption grows? Is there a mechanism forming that compounds over time?

Growth can be impressive and fragile at the same time.

Durability appears when growth strengthens something structural: cost advantages, network effects, embedded workflows, brand gravity, unique resources, or operating routines that are difficult to reproduce.

This is where the three perspectives converge.

Structure determines the constraints you operate within.
Transition determines how you scale inside those constraints.
Power determines whether what you build will endure.

When these levels get mixed up, conversations drift. People argue about features when the real issue is industry structure. They treat slow adoption as a product flaw, or celebrate early traction as proof of long-term strength. The discussion feels active, but the diagnosis is off.

Reading these books directly matters because they train different instincts.

Porter sharpens your awareness of forces beyond your control.
Moore sharpens your discipline around focus and sequencing.
Helmer sharpens your attention to compounding mechanisms.

For a product manager, this shifts roadmap thinking away from isolated features toward reinforcement. Which decisions increase switching costs? Which improve unit economics as volume grows? Which strengthen the system rather than simply extend it?

For a business owner, it reframes growth from a target to a test. Revenue expansion is visible. Structural reinforcement is slower and less obvious, but far more consequential.

The point is not to choose a favorite framework but to recognize which level of the game you are currently playing, and which question you are failing to ask.

Further Reading

1. Hamilton Helmer, 7 Powers (2016)
2. Michael Porter, Competitive Strategy (1980)
3. Geoffrey Moore, Crossing the Chasm (1991)

All three are worth reading in full. Together, they deepen how you think about competition, scale, and durability.